Saturday, October 14, 2006

Book: How to read a person like a book


How to read a person like a book by Gerald I. Nierenberg and Henry H. Calero

Terrific! I highly recommended this book to anyone who want to better communicate to others in their personal life, work place or other social gatherings. It is first published in 1970's. The authors are negotiation experts and they collect their real life observations through hundreds of negotiations plus observations on a vast majority of individuals and come up with this collection.

The book first describe the importance of nonverbal communication, and further point out that one or two particular gesture is not conclusive enough - thus the need of observing "gesture clusters", a total approach of nonverbal singals by individuals. In early chapters, gestures of different attitude like openness, evaluation, readiness, cooperation, confidence, acceptance are described and presented to readers with detailed explanation and diagrams. The final chapters summarize these indiviual gestures and assist readers to relate them with relationships, like parent and child, lovers, superior and subordinate, client and professional, and buyer and seller.

Anyone who want to better communicate to others should read this book. I only regret I read it too late in my life!

Excerpt from this book
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