Scott Adams Popular Books

Scott Adams Biography & Facts

Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various clerical roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created Dilbert; by the mid-1990s the strip had gained national prominence in America and began to reach a worldwide audience. Dilbert remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams and becoming a cultural touchstone until it was dropped from syndication. It now runs as a webcomic. Adams writes in a satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern corporations. In addition, Adams has written books in various other areas, including the pandeistic spiritual novella God's Debris and books on political and management topics, including Loserthink. In 2023, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication, after Adams published a video in which he referred to black people as a "hate group" and advised white people to "get the hell away from black people." Adams later said this was a use of hyperbole. He has continued the strip as Dilbert Reborn on his locals.com website since March 2023. Early life and education Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York, the son of Paul and Virginia (née Vining) Adams. He has described himself as "about half German" and also has English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. In 2016, Adams said he had a small amount of Native American ancestry, but later discovered via 23andme genetic testing that he does not have any detectable Native American genetic markers. He was a fan of Peanuts comics while growing up and started drawing comics at age 6. He won a drawing competition at age 11. Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his class of 39 students. He earned a BA in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York in 1979. He then moved to California and started work. In 1986, he earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Adams took Dale Carnegie Training and called it "life changing". Career Office worker Adams worked closely with telecommunications engineers at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco between 1979 and 1986. Upon joining the organization, he first worked as a teller. After four months in which he was twice held up at gunpoint, he entered a management training program. His positions included management trainee, computer programmer, budget analyst, commercial lender, product manager, and supervisor. He later shifted to work at Pacific Bell. To devote time to developing a new career, he woke up every day at 4 a.m. and spent time at various endeavors; cartooning proved to be the most successful of them. Adams created Dilbert during this period of personal exploration. The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert, originally named Dildog, was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy. His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy, were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying. He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters. In 1989, while still employed at Pacific Bell, Adams launched Dilbert with United Media. To maintain his income, he continued to draw his cartoons during the early morning hours. His first payment for Dilbert was a monthly royalty check of $368.62. Dilbert gradually became more popular. It was syndicated in 100 newspapers in 1991 and 400 by 1994. Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers. Full-time cartoonist and author Adams' success grew, and he became a full-time cartoonist as Dilbert reached 800 newspapers. In 1996, his first business book, The Dilbert Principle, was released. It expounded on his concept of the Dilbert principle. In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache. He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever". His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award. By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages. His comic strips were adapted as a Dilbert TV series, which debuted in January 1999 and ran for two seasons on UPN. Adams served as executive producer and showrunner, along with Seinfeld writer Larry Charles. The show earned a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999. On June 28, 2020, Adams asserted to his followers on Twitter that the show had been canceled because he was white and UPN had made a decision to shift toward African-American viewers. In addition to his cartoon work, Adams has written books in various other areas, including self-improvement and religion. His book God's Debris (2001) lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe. In The Religion War (2004), Adams suggests that followers of theistic religions such as Christianity and Islam are subconsciously aware that their religions are false, and that this awareness is reflected in their consistently acting as if these religions, and their threats of damnation for sinners, are false. In a 2017 interview, Adams said that his books on religion, not Dilbert, would be his ultimate legacy. In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published God's Debris for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version. Real Coffee with Scott Adams In 2015, Adams wrote blog posts predicting that Donald Trump had a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills, and he started writing about Trump's persuasion techniques. His pieces on this topic grew popular, so he started writing about it regularly. Adams soon developed this as a daily video presentation called Real Coffee with Scott Adams, distributed to Periscope, YouTube, ScottAdamsSays.com, and Locals, where he covered topics such as current events, politics, persuasion, and routes to success. Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant, Ed Latimore, Dave Rubin, Erik Finman, Greg Gutfeld, Matt Gaetz, Ben Askren, Carpe Donktum, Mark Schneider, Steve Hsu, Michael Shellenberger, Carson Griffith, Shiva Ayyadurai, James Nortey, Clint .... Discover the Scott Adams popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Scott Adams books.