The Force

Written with manic energy and uncanny insight into the guerrilla warfare of salesmanship, this day-by-day, almost novelistic chronicle tracks one Xerox sales team in Cleveland in its efforts to surpass its yearly quota selling photocopier machines. Dorsey, who spent seven years as business editor and reporter covering Xerox for the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle , gets it all down--the cat-and-mouse sales tactics, the relentless pressure, personal crises, family lives stretched to the breaking point. His taut narrative centers on sales manager Fred Thomas, whose disarming amiability conceals an obsession with making the sale and proving himself, and his wife Kathy, a homemaker avidly seeking more meaning in her life. Poor at communicating emotion, Fred fears Kathy's growing independence and her career interests. Based on the year Dorsey spent living with Xerox salespeople, this unusually candid probe reveals more about corporate life as a daily struggle for survival than a stack of how-to business manuals. First serial to Esquire; Fortune Book Club alternate; author tour. (May)