Books: The Ploy Boy

SUPERMANSHIP (128 pp.)—Stephen Potter—Random House ($3).

One of the triumphs of democratic, middle-class civilization is that anybody can be a snob about practically anybody else. In darker ages, one man's ability to make another man feel like an ignorant peasant was thought to be an inborn talent of the aristocracy. Nowadays, anyone can learn the trick, and there is no better instructor than Britain's Stephen Potter, a kind of arsenical Dale Carnegie and master planner of social insecurity.

In his treatises on Lifemanship and Gamesmanship (TIME, Sept. 6, 1948), Potter developed his brilliant theories about how to be always one up on everyone...