The Tao of Conversation: How to Talk About Things That Really Matter, in Ways That Encourage New Ideas, Deepen Intimacy, and Build Effective and Creative Working relationships

Rating:
Summary: A new idea to me
Review: I came accross this book by accident. I'm not a scholar on conversation, so this book not only opened up a new idea to me, but has inspired me investigate more about the topic of conversation. I feel that because it opened my eyes to how I converse and has helped me at my business, it deserves four stars.

Rating:
Summary: What it Is, What it's About
Review: I'm reading this book on my way to a conference, a conference where I will give the keynote address and conduct a panel and a workshop. While a lot of what Michael Kahn says seems like plain common sense, it's the putting it into practice that counts. I'll be trying to do just that.

If common sense were always put into practice, we'd call it "common action" instead of common sense. Kahn's examples and propositions are not things to be documented in APA style, but clues to how to act, if you want to have really good, useful conversations that affirm and support you and the person you're talking with. The book is not written for academics, but for people who talk with other people--and would like the results to be more interesting and useful, and less combative.

I'd like to note also, that though it was written before e-mail became a dominant mode of communication for many of us, this book's insights will work well in that environment, and especially on e-lists, where the flow of messages is much like a group conversation.

We've all had conversations that at least might have proceeded in the helpful, healthy ways Kahn suggests. This book is helping me to sort out why my better conversations were better, and learn to make the better ones happen more often. More than that, in less than 200 pages, who can ask?

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't get to the point.
Review: My opinion: Reused contemporary ideas about one aspect of good conversation. The author fills his book with far too many examples, and the examples that are given are summarized in points that are almost common-sensical. Supposedly a psychological book focusing on the author's years of research on the subject, but its apparent lack of APA citations downplay that notion. Wishy-washy.