Customer Reviews

In Your Face : What Facial Features Reveal About the People You Know and Love

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All of us would like to be able to 'read' a person when we first meet them, so that we can correctly predict whether this is a person we would like to work with, or not. Toward this end, mankind has always employed various tools. Intuition is the chief among these: that sense which tells us something about this other person, almost immediately, even though we don't know how we know it. Their walk, the way they hold themselves (proudly or otherwise), the way they talk, the degree to which they seem to be very 'left-brained' or 'right-brained,' all offer clues. Clues is sometimes the best we can hope for. Nothing is clad in certainty; but our intuition and these other means of 'scanning' a person do offer hints, hunches, and suggest lines of inquiry or further investigation that might fruitfully be pursued - - especially if we see, or think we see, the beginnings of something that causes us to be uncomfortable. Toward this end of 'reading people,' we are always looking for new tools, and Bill Cordingley has come up with a dusey: face-reading. This is not the old science of phrenology, or reading bumps on a head, but a new sophisticated system of observing correlations between facial features and personality characteristics that a portrait artist, a woman, developed over 40 years, from acute observation of the people she was painting. If cast into stone, as some people are bound to try, and interpreted as a series of laws: "if this......then inevitably it means that......." it will crash under its own weight. But approached as a series of new clues about a person, where a facial feature often (though not always) has such and such a meaning, it is a very interesting system indeed. For example, if I like to be with a person who likes to touch, and they have a facial feature which often means that person doesn't like to be touched, I haven't settled the question of, "Do they....or don't they?" But I have found a line of inquiry to follow, an area where I want to pay particular attention, to see what I can subsequently learn about this person regarding this particular personality trait, that can be tremendously helpful. I recommend this book for the most interesting clues that it offers, about people, starting with their faces.

This book is great fun to read. It's one that you will find yourself returning to often as you begin to explore the face reading principles in earnest. The content is as serious as you choose to make it - that is a point that the author makes time and time again. I appreciated the fact that Bill diligently points out to the reader that face reading alone will not guarantee you a good relationship. Time and again, he reminds us that the art of face reading will give us a good personality profile that cuts to the heart of issues like altruism, compassion for others, practicality, and the all important level of physical needs. These are areas often overlooked or masked in those early days of courtship. The rest of the story, so to speak, lies within our abilities to know who we are and what we want from our relationships. Face to face with my own face in the mirror (a practice highly recommended)gave me insights to some of the problems I have faced as I struggled with earlier relationships. Instead of feeling discouraged about my strong personality traits, I learned that the art of face reading can help me choose friends and partners with compatible traits. I commend Bill Cordingley on presenting this material in a manner that never creates in the reader's mind a snapshot of physical beauty. Instead, he hammers home the importance of looking for the balance and the integrity of the unique features we have. By the time I reached the end of this quick read, I was amazed at the number of times faces of friends and lovers flashed in front of me! Yes, that wide forehead did indeed indicate he would try to control my life! I recalled my fifth grade teacher, Sister Claire - her nose was pointed and she sure was critical! (Which, I will hasten to add, was not a bad thing at that point in my life!) Then I started to dig out the family pictures and began reading the faces of my children and their spouses - we all were delighted and intrigued with the accuracy of Bill Cordingley's technique.

All in all, I highly recommend In Your Face to everyone who seeks to understand themselves and their world a little better.

I was astonished at the accuracy of Bill Cordingley's science of face reading! In just 4 hours (the time it took me to race through the book), Bill confirmed for me my own personality traits and helped me realize why I have searched in vain for the right life partner for over 20 years. If I only knew then what I know now, I would have saved myself from some major aggravation and financial stress!

The book is easy to read and understand as Bill uses his own life's experiences and references to famous faces to illustrate his points. I appreciated the illustrations and exercises provided to visually demonstrate the techniques of face reading. Bill's illustrations helped me discover that my auto mechanic is extremely detail oriented - now that's a trait I was really pleased to find! You'll return again and again to In Your Face to confirm your observations about the people you know and love and those with whom you are just getting acquainted.

This is the first book I have read on face reading. I followed the authors instructions and looked at photos of people I knew. It was astounding how accurate this book is. This book is so accurate that it is scary. I read my ex-girlfriend's face and realized immediately why she is my "ex". I now use the information regularly with people I know, and it is right on. I cant recommend this book enough.

The field of Kinesics is very diverse. Although the author admits the theories involved are not to be relied upon 100% of the time, few things in science can be. I read the book over and over and found myself studying people I met in a whole new way. Its intriguing to notice how a person's outer facade can contradict how they are really feeling. This book is an invaluable guide into understaning others in a new and interesting way. It provided me with a new awareness of people. It was written with an emphasis on evaluating possible mates, but I found its concepts universally applicable. The author writes in a clear and conscise manner, with excellent illustrations throughout. I found the book easy to comprehend. It's a rather short book, only because the author wasted no space in making face-reading as simple and reader-friendly as possible. I recommend it for college students (psychology and human services, especially) and anyone interested in "reading" people. Anyone interested in other titles in this field can check out my Zshops books used on Amazon.com

Do you believe that the shape of Darwin's nose depicted lack of both energy and determination? (This of a man who wrote over 16 books.) If you do, then you would agree with Robert Fitzroy, the captain of the ship that transported Darwin on his historic voyage around the world. Fitzroy was a student of physiognomy, the 19th-century of study relating facial features to personality. It was closely related to other such endeavors--phrenology (assessing character through bumps in the head) and craniology (assessing intelligence by size and shape of the skull). Now we know all these pursuits are misguided. No credible study endorses their conclusions, though anyone can conjure one or two examples to impress the naive listener or reader. Your head reveals no more of your character than lines in your palm reveal your fate. It is sad to see as respectable an author as Mr. Bolles endorsing this nonsense.
. . . Darwin's eventual impression was that Fitzroy believed his nose has "spoken falsely". Just so. As does this book.
Minnesota Center for the Philosophy of Science, Univ. of Minnesota