Never Split the Difference

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 premise is that negotiating is an emotional exercise rather than an intellectual one. so he presents a bunch of techniques that he says are designed to subtly play on people's emotional processing. I assume they work well if skillfully wielded, though i can't be sure. but he never puts it all together into a coherent method. the techniques remain a grab bag. lastly, the book does not present any way for the reader to practice the techniques, though he talks about such practice in classes he teaches. consequently all except type a personalities are likely to find it intimidating.