Sometimes less is more: POWER LANGUAGE aims for accuracy, honesty, impact, logic and strength. Familiarly short simple words in a short simple style start it up. Varied sentence lengths keep it going, with the shorter sentences making the most important information stand out; with a topic sentence, its support and conclusion making up a tightly powerful paragraph; and with the two strongest sentence positions for the most meaningful points being the first and last words. Too many opinions and statistics get in the way: speaking or writing, think of the listener or reader first; and make everything powerfully clear, simple and straightforward. Jeffrey McQuain's tightly woven style and text set business and other writing on course: his book has the answers to Jefferson D. Bates's WRITING WITH PRECISION, Peter Elbow's WRITING WITH POWER, Paul A. Eschholz's LANGUAGE AWARENESS, and Marcia Lerner's WRITING SMART.

One of the most helpful and interesting books I have read to understand the disciplines of the Christian faith and the power available to ordinary people through these practices. Inspires and motivates both new church members and seasoned ones who've grown lukewarm. A wonderful welcome gift to new members - our church has decided give a copy of this book to all who join.

This is s good source of ideas for teaching your kids about how to act and react to their environment.

Smoke Jensen gets a cripted letter. After interpreting it he gathers what he needs for the journy to San Fransico. Smoke finds his only acquaintance has been killed. Then he learns of a dangerous plot to take over all of the regions wealth. Smoke beats a trail back to the Sierras and gathers angry prospectors, ranchers, and farmers for the showdown in Frisco....

Are you interested in how any particular decision will turn out? And on knowing the likely outcome, what would you do to influence the decision so it turns out in your favor? These are the two main questions addressed by the book. Most of us have instinctive ways of dealing with them. The authors put order and discipline to instinct, and describe a systematic approach, enriched with guidelines and clever tips. The system works this way: a. Identify the 5 major variables that enter into a decision. These are: the decision statement itself, the players, and each player's position, power and priority. b. Rate each player's position, power, and priority. Position goes from -5 (strongly against the decision) to +5 (strongly for the stated decision). A player's power and priority each go from 1 (very weak power or near indifference) to 5 (strong power or high priority). Each player's power-position-priority score is calculated. The total of "pro" scores over the contribution of all players is evaluated to arrive at a probability value for a "pro" outcome (same reasoning goes for the "anti" outcome). The balance of forces can also be presented graphically. c. Plan a strategy focused on specific variables. Identify those variables which when changed will best change the probability of the outcome. From a description of strategy you will learn in what context you may effectively choose to remove a player (by promoting him/her, for example), or reframe a decision statement, or stall for time, or speed up a decision, among many other strategies. There's a chart near the end of the book to guide your choice of strategies. The scoring system forces you to give a numerical score rather than a verbal description of a variable's importance. The scoring system is not overly complex as to be incomprehensible. The calculations are, in fact, the easiest part of the method. The authors claim from experience --- in consulting with business and government, including the CIA --- that the method estimates outcomes with good confidence. However, accuracy and precision are primarily the result of proper selection of the variables, especially players, and giving a score to power, position, and priority. These two steps --- selection and scoring --- are the most demanding part of power persuasion. (In later books by the same authors the method is called Political Accounting.) The method, however, gives a snapshot of the condition of the balance of forces. The authors discuss how to incorporate estimates of the evolution of this balance. They also discuss how to rate players considered as a group, how to use the method to run meetings, and how to answer objections to the method's use. The method has applications in every field wherever decisions are involved, from the home to entire nations. The authors make this clear, and write in a fitting style. It's a practical book for practical people, not a scholarly work, though its insights on human behavior can surely be discussed in terms of cutting-edge psychological science. I expected the authors to put in a checklist of "interview" or "research" questions summarizing the whole process. I wrote out my own checklist of questions to help me in my intelligence work, and have included questions proper to evaluating psychological profiles (itself important in giving scores). I guess the authors meant their readers to write such checklists suited to their own needs. Power Persuasion is among the 10 most practical professional books I've ever read.

A treasure box of great ideas that can help anybody in becoming a very successful and wealthy real estate salesperson.

The author was my undergraduate advisor and he literally changed the course of my life. Everyone who reads this book is affected in a similar way. While the statistics are solid and powerful, the book is accessible to everyone on every level. Someone who has no previous exposure to the American criminal justice system can easily gain a large knowledge base while criminal justice scholars will find the book to be a powerful summary of much that is wrong with the current system and its function (or, more accurately, disfunction) within society. From the motives that drive government officials and police officers to the effects that labeling individuals as criminals at a young age to the amount of tax dollars spent and manipulated every year by the government and government-funded agencies, the book clearly and effectively drives home the point that each and every individual in this country is, in one way or another, a victim of the "War on Crime." The book is not preachy and does not make the reader feel as if they are being lectured but rather opens the reader's eyes as a view of the bigger picture inevitably hits home. Regardless of whether you consider yourself liberal, conservative, or just plain politically apathetic, reading this book will lead you to immediately develop an acute awareness that the American battle plan in the "war on crime" cannot prevail. The book thoughtfully and entertainingly compiles fact and truth in the form of statistics, research, and illustrative anecdotes in order to expose the real enemies in the war on crime. The American public is frequently made to believe that when it comes to our country's well-being, it's "us" against "them." I think Chambliss would agree with that; however, in every war, those standing on the battlefield where weapons have been drawn must choose a side and Chambliss makes clear that many people have unknowingly been given misleading ideas about who the "us" and "them" are.

Simply stated, the effect of the book is to place every reader within the plot of a classic children's story. Too many have lived for too long with the fear that the sky is falling, not realizing that all are actually being cleverly lured into Foxy Loxy's den.

If everyone in this country were required to read this book, America would be a better place.

I have found this book to be an invaluable source for finding courses in the Mid-Atlantic area. Course descriptions are concise and honest. Travel directions are excellent. Book contains money saving coupons which more than make up for the cost of the book. I anxiously await the 1999 version, as my 1998 is falling apart from frequent use.

If you want to make the big bucks sueing the deep pockets because there are a lot of stupid people in this country then this is the book and class for you! However, if you subscribe to the outmoded idea that personal responsibility for you actions is a value worth having then I would skip this subject.

Plank's book is generally more helpful than the books by Kauffman, Hollingdale, and Safranski, especially in the emphasis on the hyperborean Nietzsche and in Nietzschean critiques of several major figures from the renaissance to the present. It is the best work and maybe the only one to connect game theory and the discoveries of quantum physics to Nietzsche's intuitions on such things as local reality and a conscious universe. The average attentive reader can get through it. Someone should have proofed it more carefully since it is missing some periods. Nietzsche's impertinent style seems to have rubbed off on Plank.