In Career Warfare, David F. D’Alessandro, the bestselling author of Brand Warfare, has written a business classic: an insightful and delightfully frank book about achieving professional success at a high level.

What really defines those who get ahead? Hard work and accomplishments will only get you so far. If you intend to compete at the levels where the competition gets really ferocious—where everybody is hard-working and accomplished—you need a much more subtle weapon. According to D’Alessandro, the CEO of Hancock Financial Services, you cannot win without the kind of reputation of “personal brand” that convinces powerful people to trust you.

D’Alessandro, a keen observer of the unwritten rules of organizational life, shows how personal brands are built out of people’s day-to-day behavior in even the most insignificant movements. He also demonstrates what a battle it is to build a good one. It is a battle even to be noticed early in your career; it is a battle not to become dangerously arrogant later on. You constantly have to defend your brand from the sniping of your enemies, the indifference of your bosses, and your own worst impulses.

Career Warfare will help you to win these fights at every stage of your career by showing you how to

Look beyond your own navel
Make people want to take a chance on you
Get your boss to promote your “personal brand”
Decide when to stay in a bad job and when to leave a good one
Recognize the types of organization that will keep you from rising
Pull away from the pack in mid-career
And much more
Using vivid stories from his own rise through the organizational ranks, D’Alessandro offers shrewd advice for disarming the people who hold your career in their hands and introduces a remarkable cast of characters along the way. You’ll meet the corporate chairman who gave himself a speech impediment, the account executive who sang opera for a president, and the job candidate who washed her face with a pancake. You will also meet some of the smartest managers of their own public images on the planet and learn from the things they have done right.

Success, says D’Alessandro, is not going to come from your accomplishments alone. But you can separate yourself from the crowd and rise to the level of your ambitions—if you create the kind of personal impression that commands respect. Career Warfare offers the smartest advice you’ll ever get about how to do it.