Rating: 
Summary: Concepts and techniques that work
Review: The stuff in this book should be obvious to most reasonable people. If you're having problems at this level, you still have a long way to go in terms of dealing with truly difficult situations. Seeing so many people liking books like this gets me worried... (Is it just me who feels like I'm back in kindergarten when I take these corporate self improvement classes (come on, be honest now).)If you can generally gather the gumption to talk with people through awkward issues, this book will not help. My really difficult issues in life are with severely complexed people who are either defensive to the point of being anti-social or with those who never learned the skill to listen. You know people like this, right? Their bad behavior inevitably drives away their friends and they often have trouble with their other family members. I'm not saying that I'm always in the right when having difficult conversations with people like this. What I struggle with is dealing with really hard headed people, and this book only belabors obvious points like "there are two sides to every story" and "you have to try to stay reasonable if you care to get through". Everything in the book is good, if that's what you want to learn about. I just found it too obvious, and it assumes the case where the other person is a relatively well adjusted person.
Rating: 
Summary: "A Dangerous book in the hands of morons"! (NY, USA)
Review: Well the reviewer has got a great sense of humour! I was laughing my a*se off! It sems so many people do not practice what they preach. This guy's bosses whoever they are or were seem to have 'lost the plot'. Isn't it strange that the 'Golden Rule' in business I was taught is not often used. It is as my Mum still says, "Do as you would be done by". Very simple but common sense is not usually common action! My invitation to this person is please make contact with me as I have some questions I'd like the writer to answer before I buy the book! Dear Amazon.com, can you arrange that? Give the writer my e-mail address please.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerous book in the hands of morons
Review: Having researched numerous books on this subject, I found this to be one of the best. The book is structured well: the introduction gives an apt overview, the writing is simple and to the point, with excellent examples and an outline provided to assist with a final review.
One of the book's strongest points is its focus on the underlying problems that create situations where conversation becomes difficult. The temptation to digress and meander into a quagmire of various psychological/environmental/biological explainations can be great, but the writers stays the course, using only pertinent examples and explainations, keeping the book fairly short and to the point.
Many works of this genre focus on superficial fixes. Some of those do work, particularly for short term situations. However, the topics covered in this book go a little below that superficial surface, often seriously questioning common behaviors that often contribute and prolong difficult conversations/situations.
The book seems to be a well researched collaborative effort, balancing the findings from social, Rogerian, cognitive, psychology to findings from the business world, as well as strategic lessons found from Sun Tzu.
A caveat: the recommended techniques hold great promise, but using them requires quite a bit of work. Unlike the many fixes from other sources, there are no promises of immediate success. Instead, there may be many obstacles both from the self and from others that will come up.
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