Self-Help Books for Personal Improvement

What are your favourite self-help books? Oh, don't tell me you don't have any or you don't read that type of book.... really? Haven't found any that meet your high intellectual standards? Feel they are too preachy for you? Too didactic? Well, I say, what's wrong with learning a lesson... it can be a lesson you draw for yourself, too.

I certainly agree that many self-help books pander to a lower, lower denominator of thoughts and impulses with the "mass" culture. But you could argue that something like Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers is also a self-help book. At least this is how I see it. It's partly why I started this site about it. I'd been thinking about the topic of personal success for a while (well, who hasn't!), but this book actually has some practical tips in it that you wouldn't expect. I've already listed some of the main ones in previous posts. My favourite so far is definitely to identify the special time and place within which you live/ were born (he didn't phrase it exactly like that, this is my phrase, but it amounts to the same thing).