A fresh approach offering new ways to improve negotiating skills.
Wheeler (Harvard Business School/Negotiation, 2003, etc.) distills his teaching experience and research in expanding methods of negotiation.
The author writes that many negotiation tactics fail to “capture the complexity of real-world negotiation.” Old-fashioned hardball methods were undermined by the emphasis on first identifying and then building on mutual interests of those involved. Wheeler offers a dynamic approach that assumes interests will be identified and developed during negotiations, and he stresses that effective negotiations are based on the ability to extemporize and to master a flexible approach, permitting uncertainty to be managed effectively. “We can’t script the process,” he writes. “Whoever sits across the table from us may be just as smart, determined, and fallible as we are.” Wheeler begins with a three-part cycle based on the capacity to learn, adapt and influence, and he brings these abstractions to life by discussing classroom experiences designed to address the effectiveness of different ways of dealing with problems, using role-playing and other kinds of simulations and enactments. Wheeler also provides case studies from real estate transactions and other business ventures. He discusses how Don Schnabel acquired and assembled separate parcel lots into the most expensive lot in New York history, which became Citibank's headquarters; and how Jerry Weintraub inveigled the movie stars who participated in the Oceans Eleven remake with him into a sequel by “stretching the truth.” Wheeler advocates planning, envisioning pathways to the endgame, and using both carrots and sticks, among other approaches. He also provides many examples and helpful stratagems for dealing with slights and belittlement, and he examines nonverbal and emotional behaviors. Throughout, he advocates looking below the surface for closure opportunities. For him, the OODA loop—observe, orient, decide, act—supplements learning, adapting and influencing.
A fresh approach offering new ways to improve negotiating skills.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9042-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
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