I think that this is a very good and a very important topic as it applies not only to our daily lives, but also to our self esteem and self confidence just as much if not more than the physical aspects of the martial arts and I think that both the Samurai and people like Bruce Lee would approve of such a topic as Bruce Lee once said that it is best to be like water.
It also tends to make me wonder as to how many people here are into NLP and psychology as I have seen a few posts relating to NLP and to books like Verbal Judo.
Another good book that I found that relates to verbal self defense is 'Tongue Fu' by Sam Horn and one other one that I found is 'The complete idiots guide to verbal self defense' by Dr. Lillian Glass.
I've also seen a few other books out there relating to toxic people, but at the moment I just can't remember as to who the author is and it is because of those books as well as my studies of things like psychology, NLP, Hypnosis, seduction, and attraction as well as my own personal experiences that I have really started to look at the topic of verbal self defense as well as my physical security as well.
For me the martial arts is something that I grew up with and like Chuck Norris mentioned in his book 'Against all odds' I basically grew up without a father and as a result I ended up turning to the martial arts for guidance. The only real difference between me and him in that respect is that for Chuck Norris it was the westerns, where for me it was the martial arts.