Alan Alda

During his time as the host of the TV show Scientific American Frontiers, Alan Alda became interested in the question of science communication. How could he communicate better with the scientists he was interviewing, and how could they better communicate their ideas to others? From there, he started thinking about the importance of good, effective communication in all sorts of other areas, too: doctors communicating to patients, bosses communicating with employees, and so on. He became convinced that the key to improving communications lay in a simple word: empathy. Understanding one's audience, paying attention to their responses, anticipating their needs, engaging with their emotions, and establishing a sense of connection with them. He also feels that his own experiences as an actor, and especially his experiences with improv, can bring a lot of useful skills to those attempting to improve their ability to communicate, and has set up an organization to share those skills with others.

Most of Alda's points here seem reasonable, even commonsense. I may wonder if he's overhyping the benefits of improv exercises a little bit, but I'm entirely willing to believe he's seen good results from it, and that's pretty cool. He practices what he preaches here, too, writing very clearly with lots of personal anecdotes and accessible stories. And I appreciate that, in presenting both his own anecdotal experiences and the results of actual scientific studies, he does try to be appropriately clear about which is which.

So, in summary: Alda seems like a good guy, has some good ideas about a subject I agree is important, seems to be accomplishing something with them, and explains them in easy-to-understand ways. And yet, I'm still afraid I can't say that this book did all that much for me. Maybe it's partly that so much of it seems a bit... obvious. But mostly I think it's that this is one of those books that really, really could and should just have been a long magazine article. He did not remotely need two hundred pages to get his points across, and the whole thing leaves me with the strong and slightly disappointed suspicion that it's only this long because that's what's necessary to get published.… (más)

(2007)(audio)Very good collection of essays by Alda that reflect his philosophy of ?his? life both personal & celebrity. His reading of the book enhances this as it IS Alan Alda after all and that voice is perfect for an audio book.(PW) Following his 11-year run on TV's M*A*S*H, Alda has continually transformed himself professionally through a diverse array of successful projects. Yet his status as America's quintessential nice guy still follows him at every turn, rendering Alda a hot ticket for college commencement addresses and other high-profile events. With his characteristic modesty and charm, Alda reflects on his public words to find introspective insights about the important questions of life. Early in the recording, his interjections of new parenthetical comments as he recites the texts of older speeches is slightly choppy. Yet when he tackles meatier questions and more sober situations, especially his role as a eulogist at the funerals for close friends Ossie Davis and Peter Jennings, Alda hits his stride by baring his soul instead of shooting from the hip. Alda's phenomenal gift as a storyteller shines through, even when the style in which he organizes his material may not perfectly suit the audio format.… (más)