Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

A former FBI hostage negotiator breaks down some key negotiation strategies. Part how-to and part history of the FBI's negotiation techniques, with a lot of real-world stories from the author's career.

Completely fascinating. It's largely geared towards business students (the author has a company that consults and teaches negotiation skills), but the strategies themselves are wonderfully explained and how they evolved over time is super interesting. Great, smooth read and stuff you can actually use.

Voss shares his "magic formulas" for negotiating. He seems to think they're foolproof, and befuddle the academics, but they seem easily gameable if you identify someone's using one of his strategies. Still, there's value in understanding anchoring, mirroring, and tactical empathy, so despite its weaknesses, this book gets a 4.5 from me and goes into my toolbox and reread pile.

I liked the book, but it didn’t resonate with me. It might have been the timing. It could be that the examples we far removed from my experience. In short, there are other books in this genre that I found more approachable.