A tough-talking and disarmingly smart look at what it takes to be a canny negotiator.
Michael offers a guide to all levels of negotiating.
In his nonfiction debut, the author draws on his background in personal finance, investing, economics, stock markets, and marketing (as well as an extensive career in aviation) to create what he calls “the best book about negotiation ever written.” In these pages, Michael takes readers through all the different kinds and stages of negotiation, operating from the initial assumption that we are all involved in some kind of negotiation virtually for the whole of our lives. He adopts (right from the start) a belligerent tone that permeates the book, relating how every time he entered a room to negotiate, he felt aggressively self-confident about dealing with his opponents (“I’ll add them to the landscape littered with the bodies of people I’ve taken on in negotiations over the past four decades”). Negotiation is a learnable skill, the author maintains, but it helps if the learner is already self-confident, persuasive, and analytically dispassionate. On top of these foundational qualities, Michael layers more detailed advice gleaned from his own experiences (an autobiographical thread runs through the chapters), from basics like putting everything in writing and not negotiating with people impaired by drugs or alcohol to dealing with the lawyers who are almost inevitably a part of the process (don’t assume a great lawyer is a good negotiator, he warns). Michael comes off as tough and experienced. For good or ill, he’s prone to pithy maxims like “Use anger as an action, but avoid it as a reaction” or “Everything is negotiable” (contradicted by his admission that sometimes a negotiation runs into “a brick wall with no way around or through it”). On balance, his hard-won wisdom wins out over the business-jock aphorisms.
A tough-talking and disarmingly smart look at what it takes to be a canny negotiator.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2024
ISBN: 9798991032001
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.
A principled athlete strives for social justice.
Kaepernick forthrightly details the activism that earned him global renown but cost him his NFL career. In 2016, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback “was filled with disgust” after police shootings of fellow Black men in several American cities. Before a preseason game, he made a spontaneous decision: “It hit me in that moment that I should find a seat” during the national anthem. He did the same at two more games before reporters noticed. Kaepernick will forever be associated with “taking a knee” during the anthem, but he credits Eric Reid—a teammate who agreed with Kaepernick’s message—for suggesting that they kneel together during subsequent anthems. The protest changed everything for Kaepernick. President Trump vilified him. Kaepernick and his wife received death threats. And though he’d taken the 49ers to a Super Bowl, no teams would sign him. He will likely make news for his take on Jay-Z, whose lucrative partnership with the NFL was criticized as an attempt to launder the league’s reputation. Visiting Africa, where Kaepernick learns about “African leaders who willingly sold their own people to the enslavers,” he “couldn’t help but to think about Jay-Z and the NFL.” In opening chapters, Kaepernick recalls suffering traumatic racial abuse as a child. Being in “white spaces”—he was adopted by white parents—placed him “under a microscope every minute of every day.” He isn’t always nuanced, depicting some people he disagrees with as cartoonishly clueless. But his writing about how college and pro teams “lied” to him about injuries underlines his “feeling of being a disposable commodity.” A decade has passed since Kaepernick played in the NFL, but he stays fit in case “a team needing a QB” calls.
A football star’s bracing account of his battle for racial equality—and how powerful forces arrayed against him.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2026
ISBN: 9781538777879
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2026
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