Best for:
Perhaps people who need to negotiate? Or maybe people who just want a quick reference of different ideas or theories on communication? I’m not totally sure.

In a nutshell:
An attempt at narrowing down — into two pages and a diagram — theories of communication.

Worth quoting:
“Negotiating properly means everyone gets more than they expected to.”

Why I chose it:
I was about a week away from starting up an office job for the first time in nearly a year, and figured I could use a refresher on communicating with people who aren’t my partner or friends.

Review:
I’m not sure what this book is. It’s not a book that you read cover to cover (well, I did, but I didn’t need to). It is more of a reference book. And while the ideas the authors explore are loosely collected into communication realms (Job and Career, Self and Knowledge, Love and Friendship, Words and Meanings), I didn’t notice much of a difference between certain ideas that warranted them being siloed into such categories. But I appreciate the attempt at good organization.

I think this book would work much better in a larger format, where one page is the diagram of the idea (and the diagrams are cute and somewhat helpful), and one page is the overview / explanation. There isn’t a lot of content here — each section is a very high-level overview — so my suggestion would result in a much thinner book, but I think that book would be better for it. The diagrams all take up two pages, which means there’s the spine smack in the middle. It’s hard to read.

The fact that I don’t recall much of what I read, and that my focus is on organization and formatting should be a hint as to why I’m not a big fan of this book. I appreciate the concept and even some of the content, but the execution just didn’t work for me.

Keep it / Donate it / Toss it:
Keep it, because it might be a good reference point.

A perfect coffee table book. Not all chapters impressed me. But pick a chapter you are interested in and you are going to enjoy it.