Is today’s self-help industry teaching everyone to be a jerk?

There’s a certain flavour of advice that is dominating the self-help bestseller list. These books have titles like The Courage To Be Disliked and Set Boundaries, Find Peace. They tell readers not to worry so much about letting people down, not to answer those calls from aggravating friends, not to be afraid of being the villain.

This all becomes more alarming when you think of the bestseller list as a mirror of the social moment, which some historians say it may be.