Sheryl Sandberg may be a brilliant technology executive, but she's no Noah Webster.

The chief operating officer of Facebook a year ago gave us her "sort of feminist manifesto" for women to succeed in business: Don't worry about being liked, don't give in too soon, work hard, and assert yourself. She padded that out to 240 pages, charged $24.95 a pop and called it "Lean In," a rallying cry that instead lent itself to jokes about shattering glass ceilings with low-cut blouses.