This book is not scholarly. Its anecdotes are fun to read, and in terms of manipulating businesspeople to try to negotiate more often when their instincts say duke it out, it probably is decently effective. And that's a laudatory aim, so I give Mnookin credit for that, though I'd of course have preferred it if he had accomplished this goal via actual arguments rather than rhetorical sleights of hand.

The book is very uncritical and non-reflective towards negotiation as a concept (it doesn't give solid examples of when it is bad to negotiate, and the example he gives with respect to Churchill is astoundingly self-fulfilling). Moreover, at times Mnookin is massively self-promoting, which is quite distracting. To the extent one is looking for a "serious" discussion of the issues Mnookin purports to raise, you're in the wrong place. It definitely falls less in the "important contributions to negotiating theory" box, and more in the "busy executive self-help box". Which, of course, is a useful box -- but one that I think is beneath Mnookin's considerable talents. ( )

I liked that this book explored dealing with opponents who you have a negative visceral response to. It seemed that the stories (which were very interesting) were longer than the few ideas presented here. While it fell short of delivering on the title it is still worth reading. ( )