by Dr. Clotaire Rapaille

Why do we make friends easily but find it difficult to keep them for a long time? Why do we have such a strong work ethic? Why does personal appearance mean so much to us? Why are our kitchens and bathrooms and cars getting bigger? Why do we choose the leaders we do? Why do we buy what we buy, eat what we eat, and who we love?

The Culture Code explains the idea behind the answer to all these questions: that there lies, hidden below the surface, a force common to all of us—a Cultural Unconscious, capable of shaping all of our decisions and driving our behavior.

What lies behind our fascination with the female navel? Is there such a thing as Mr. Right? Why do we go home for Thanksgiving? Why do we “work” on our tans? What does physical beauty really mean to us? The answers are often surprising and always illuminating.

Publishers Weekly Review

French-born marketing consultant and psychoanalyst Rapaille takes a truism—different cultures are, well, different—and expands it by explaining how a nation’s history and cultural myths are psychological templates to which its citizens respond unconsciously. Fair enough, but after that, it’s all downhill. Rapaille intends his theory of culture codes to help us understand “why people do what they do,” but the “fundamental archetypes” he offers are just trumped-up stereotypes. He often supports jarring pronouncements (“The Culture Code for perfection in America is DEATH”) with preposterous generalizations and overstatements, e.g., Japanese men “seem utterly incapable of courtship or wooing a woman.” Writing with the naïveté of someone who has learned about the world only through Hollywood films, he seems unaware that every person living within a nation’s borders doesn’t necessarily share the same cultural biases and references. Rapaille’s successful consulting career is evidence that he’s more convincing in the boardroom than he is on the page. Amid the overheated prose and dubious factoids, it’s easy to overlook the book’s scattered marketing proposals and employee-management tips.

“This book is just plain astonishing! Filled with profound insights and ideas that have enormous consequences for today’s organizations. If you want to understand customers, Constituencies, and crowds, this book is required reading.”