Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0789432447, Paperback)

If you can learn to communicate as clearly and succinctly as this itsy-bitsy book will communicate its key points to you, you're in good shape. In this pocket-size handbook, you'll find practical techniques for holding an audience, briefing effectively, structuring a message, and giving verbal rewards--not to mention for improving your listening skills, reading more efficiently, chairing meetings, communicating to sell, negotiating to win, and much more, including using PR and advertising effectively. Along the way, clear text and illustrations cover every aspect of formal and informal communications, and simple checklists will help you become a more powerful communicator. Granted, if you're looking for very specific or in-depth guidance, you may find this book too cursory and general in its approach. But if you're looking for a thumbnail guide to the basics, it'll do you just fine.

It's worth mentioning that the book is also part of reference publisher Dorling Kindersley's Essential Managers series--20 itty-bitty li'l books on business and career topics ranging from communication, leadership, and decision making to the management of time, budgets, change, meetings, people, projects, and teams. Combining the For Dummies book series's talent for breaking down a lot of information into bite-size bits and sidebars with Dorling Kindersley's signature design style of crisp, classy graphics on a gleaming white backdrop, they don't represent the cutting edge of business thinking and they don't necessarily reflect any unique individual perspective. Instead, it's as though someone collated the best general thinking on these 20 topics and rolled them out into 72 brightly designed and easy-to-read pages, studded along the way with boxed tips, color shots of a multiracial cast of "coworkers" animatedly hashing through the workplace issues of the day, and a self-test of one's skills in the topic at hand on the last few pages of each volume. Again, they're not for anyone looking for more in-depth or focused help on any of the subjects they cover, but they're perfect as a quickie general-interest reference... and let's face it, they're so damned cute and look so smart in a neat little stack or row that you'll probably want to buy a whole bunch to give as gifts to your entire staff or department. --Timothy Murphy