How to Turn the Other Cheek and Still Survive in Today's World (Paperback)

by Suzette Haden Elgin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
In How to Turn the Other Cheek and Still Survive in Today's World, linguistics expert Dr. Suzette Haden Elgin teaches you the skills to handle the "blows" that come your way without sacrificing your principles or rolling over in a helpless heap.

Product Details

• Paperback: 222 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson Inc (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785272496
• ISBN-13: 978-0785272496
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #918,240 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars shows us how to practice what we preach!!, November 10, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Minneapolis, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

Most people sort of uncomfortably gloss over Jesus' words about turning the other cheek. We think of Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. and conclude that we're not "spiritual" enough to live out his teachings. Or maybe the conflicts we encounter are just too messy, to wrapped up with "the way the world works" to have anything to do with this spiritual stuff. Elgin shows that Jesus was not commanding passivity, but instead encouraging us to respond actively and lovingly to those "difficult" people in our lives -- even those who have power over us. Her approach combines decent biblical wisdom with sophisticated knowledge of human communication to produce a really practical guide to all kinds of everyday conflicts.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I found this book useful enough to specficy it for a class., May 8, 2000

By A Customer

I'm teaching graduate students in dispute resolution. The information in this book, especially the sensory mode matching, is extremely useful on a practical level.

7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat disappointing, August 8, 1999

By A Customer

Elgin raises good questions in her book, but the situations are somewhat overdramatized. The worst part of the book, however, is its emphasis on "matching styles (hear/see/touch)" to achieve better communication. For example, if the speaker uses a lot of "hearing" words such as "That sounds strange" or "Can't you just listen to me", then you should respond with similar "hearing" vocabulary. In my opinion, this is just window dressing for the main issue: sticking to Proverbs 15:1 ("A gentle answer turns away wrath") will get you a lot farther.

One good point about the book was that it brought up a good rule: assume that someone is speaking the truth (no matter how ridiculous it sounds), and try to find out why the speaker believes that is true. This tehcnique of "putting yourself in the other person's shoes" is also explaned well in Covey's _7 Habits of Highly Effective People_.