I read Cialdini's Influence after liking a passage quoted here a little bit ago. My view is that almost all of it is quite good and definitely worth reading. There are two reasons I hesitate to give it my fullest recommendation. First, many of you here will already be familiar with a reasonable portion of its content - largely because of its influence on the sequences and LessWrong posts. As such, some parts may be not too exciting. Still, it will give a chance to further internalize the material and pick up on a number of points that aren't often said here. The second down point is that Cialdini seems to only really enjoy writing the book when he is talking of case studies and making his main points. In between these are drab, repetitive filler material meant to segue from interesting point to interesting point. These portions read like a high school essay following the teacher's suggestions of cliche ways to make their paper good - ask leading questions, summarize what you just said, summarize what you are about to say, etc. I got the distinct impression that had he had no editors or publishers, the Cialdini would have jumped form point to point without the least regard for such details and would have been better for it. However, these parts are short and don't hurt the main point. The only part where this really is problematic is at the end of each chapter where he tries to give advice on what to do to overcome that influence technique. While these ought to be the most useful parts of the book, they struck me as trite (most of them boiled down to "pay attention and then when you notice it, stop doing it" without any details) and drawn out. Cutting these from the books might have removed a bullet point for the marketing campaign, but really would only have made the book better.

Mad science! Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark, a book on working with some of the most ridiculously dangerous chemicals in industrial and military use. Long out of print, but a PDF is in the Science Madness library. From that site I also recommend Excuse Me Sir, Would You Like to Buy a Kilo of Isopropyl Bromide? [PDF] by Max Gergel.