Customer Reviews

Persuasion: The Art Of Influencing People

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This is a practical, readable and most of all tremendously interesting book from the field of communication skills and inter-personal relationships. Though it is written for general public and intended to facilitate our professional and personal face-to-face relationships, it can be extremely helpful for `business people' and all those dealing with other individuals or groups, such as tourist guides and interpreters. In the latter case, they will find the book instructive on how to carry out presentations and manage their groups more effectively.

The book describes various skills of controlling the audience's attention, among other topics. You can learn how to recognize (in)visible signs of a breakdown of attention of your audience, to `read' the body language of people in your tour groups, and to generally win more attention while guiding. You'll find here how to pick up signals as to how you are coming across, retrieve the situation if somebody is resistant, choose the right words to get results in any situation, and more.

The text of this book is written in a charming way with a lot of examples from everyday life, given in special 'boxes'. Each chapter is followed by a small test, so the reader can check out his understanding of the subject. Even though you might think of yourself as a persuasive professional, there is always enough space for further improvements. James Borg's book is here to help you in that direction, and not only in your professional milieu.

This review refers to the paperback edition, published in October 2004. At the moment, it is available from Amazon.co.uk

James Borg offers an overview of the art of persuasion in this good book. The book offers a good balance of important ideas and straightforward presentation.

In a more general sense, this book serves as a good starting point for more thorough reading on topics addressed in this book.

I recommend this as a primer for those interested in the art of persuasion. It should serve as a good reference base for learning about this important topic.

1. If you already know a little about presentation skills:

This is the only book I've ever seen where the author claims that people pay maximum attention in the **middle** of a presentation, and least attention at the beginning and the end.

The rest of the content is of a similar quality.

2. If you are a newcomer to presentation skills:

Based on numerous studies of such things as "primacy and recency" (what was said first, and what was said most recently), it is generally acknowledged that people tend to pay most attention at the beginning of a standard presentation, nearly as much at the end, and least in the middle.

According to this book, however, and with no hint of an explanation or supporting evidence, the exact opposite is true.

The rest of the content is of a similar quality.

It is possible, of course, that I have misunderstood the author's intended message - in which case I guess that simply demonstrates that the explanations in the book are even worse than I thought they are.