Robert H. Mnookin

The number of Jews who neither worship at a synagogue nor belong to one has been growing steadily. Jewish scholars are hard pressed to know why and even more hard pressed to figure out how to return the missing Jews to the synagogue. Many scholars believe that if the trend continues, Judaism may die in American, accomplishing what millennia of anti-Semitism could not. Assimilation, some believe, may be the root of this decline because Jews like so many others have allowed their religion to fade away.

Mnookin, a Harvard School of Law professor, takes a hard look at the reasons why Jews are no longer associated with synagogues, no longer worship as Jews, and, indeed, no longer see themselves as Jewish. His writing is not preachy and is easy to read. He’s done his research and this book shows the depth of his research.

This book will be of interest to those Jews who no longer identify themselves as Jews as well as those who are concerned about the decline of Judaism in America.… (mais)

Along with Difficult Conversations and Getting to Yes this is one of three texts, plus handouts, used at a Negotiation course at Harvard Law taken by students all over the university--and by people from all over the world. At the end of the course, the students spontaneously rose to give the teachers a standing ovation. It's a very popular and valuable course--and this book deals with some of the techniques at the heart of it.

A lot of the principles discussed here is not just for lawyers or diplomats or labor leaders. It applies to any of those kinds of situations where you have to make a deal, get something from someone without getting taken. That might mean negotiating a raise, coming to a price, resolving a dispute with a neighbor.

It talks about such techniques and strategies as focusing on interests, inventing options--and knowing your BATNA. (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In other words, know when and at what point to walk away rather than let yourself get pressured into something you can't live with.) It shares that common ground with Getting to Yes. That book though is more geared towards the general reader. Beyond Winning is longer, more technical, and much more geared to the lawyer.… (mais)

This book is not scholarly. Its anecdotes are fun to read, and in terms of manipulating businesspeople to try to negotiate more often when their instincts say duke it out, it probably is decently effective. And that's a laudatory aim, so I give Mnookin credit for that, though I'd of course have preferred it if he had accomplished this goal via actual arguments rather than rhetorical sleights of hand.

The book is very uncritical and non-reflective towards negotiation as a concept (it doesn't give solid examples of when it is bad to negotiate, and the example he gives with respect to Churchill is astoundingly self-fulfilling). Moreover, at times Mnookin is massively self-promoting, which is quite distracting. To the extent one is looking for a "serious" discussion of the issues Mnookin purports to raise, you're in the wrong place. It definitely falls less in the "important contributions to negotiating theory" box, and more in the "busy executive self-help box". Which, of course, is a useful box -- but one that I think is beneath Mnookin's considerable talents.… (mais)