This engaging guide—brimming with advice, heart, and humor—takes a fascinating deep dive into what makes people tick.
Kanter St. Amour delivers a comprehensive guide to the nuanced art of knowing when and how to negotiate like a pro.
The author, an attorney and lecturer, is no stranger to negotiation, having made it her profession for over 20 years. Here she presents a clear, navigable path toward becoming a better negotiator. Kanter St. Amour walks readers through the two main negotiation types—deal making and dispute resolution—and breaks down five conflict-handling modes, which include competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. Each chapter contains a few “Everyday Super Tip[s]” sections that include additional insight and advice (“Being quiet while you wait for your turn to talk is not the same as listening”). While discussing more complex terminologies and concepts, such as the reciprocity principle, the author uses personal anecdotes and examples to drive home her points in an easily digestible way. Readers will walk away with a handy list of dos and don’ts when negotiating with others and will know how to most effectively do so in person, over the phone, or even through email. While qualities like being a good listener can naturally benefit negotiators, they’re by no means required— Kanter St. Amour points out that negotiation is just about the stories we tell ourselves: “Storytelling is ancient; there is no stronger connection between people. Stories create bonds between people, emphasize shared values and goals, and bridge differences. This is how deals are sealed and conflicts are healed.” The text, interspersed with the author’s own watercolor paintings and guest drawings, proves admirably inclusive (such as when the author acknowledges her use of cisgender vocabulary in reference to certain studies). Even when diving into more technical aspects, such as analyzing the biological responses of the brain during negotiation, Kanter St. Amour never loses sight of the humans behind the deal.
This engaging guide—brimming with advice, heart, and humor—takes a fascinating deep dive into what makes people tick.Pub Date: Aug. 11, 2022
ISBN: 979-8986446103
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Pactum Factum Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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