Allan Pease

I actually read this book in my senior year at high school, sort of as background research for my stall at our school charity fair, where we were telling fortunes, reading palms, interpreting dreams and reading tarot cards. I was interpreting the dreams and reading palms, and what I learned about body language here helped me way more than all the books, articles and website pages I read on actual fortune telling put together! The stall was the hit of the fair: no bragging!! It was talked show more about for weeks afterwards, and I had people coming up to me for ages after asking me to interpret dreams for them!! Although I did put disclaimers saying that this was all in good fun, I guess people believe what they want!

It was a great book overall, incredibly informative, and actually practical! Of course I hope people don't use it to supplement careers as swindlers (kinda like what I did? Hopefully the 'good intention' defense would be accepted in a court of law lol!), but I think this should be read by anyone interested in understanding the connection between the body and the mind. show less

This book is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it seems to be a collection the conventional wisdom on gender difference backed up by evolutionary biology / psychology pseudoscience. And yet, there is a reason why conventional wisdom has developed and not all the science is junk. I think this can be a useful book in understand the general inclinations of many people. There are some unfortunately tendencies described in this book which I think are common among men and women. I think learning about show more these tendencies and dynamics can empower people to make choices about how to live their lives rather than to be driven by them. The worse use of this book would be to take some of patterns described in this book and feel trapped to justified in bad / unwise behavior because it what biology is making you do. show less

This book was required reading for a course I took in college, and it stuck with me enough that, when I was looking for a book on the basics of body language again 10 years later, I picked it up again. This book does not hold the secrets to interpreting human behavior, but it does have some handy tools to figure out how others may perceive what you are saying and how you can attempt to modify your own gestures to convey different sentiments non-verbally. The book is largely devoted to show more business, particularly in pitching sales, but much of the guidance can apply to other areas of life as well.

There are a few sections that are outdated - for instance, which direction a potential buyer blows their cigarette smoke is not often something we get to take into consideration during a business meeting; and I can't fathom the idea of someone EVER getting out of their car during a traffic stop to try to persuade an officer not to give you a ticket these days! But most of the information is still relevant and applicable. Definitely a good, quick primer to understanding body language. show less

Overall this is an enjoyable and entertaining book. I picked it up because I saw it in the library and couldn't resist because of the title. It kind of points out things that we know already, but talks about them on a neurological level. However, the language is not overly scientific so that most adults can easily grasp the concepts. A fun read.