Bargaining With The Devil

The art of negotiation—from one of the country’s most eminent practitioners and the Chair of the Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation. One of the country’s most eminent practitioners of the art and science of negotiation offers practical advice for the most challenging conflicts—when you are facing an adversary you don’t trust, who may harm you, or who you may even feel is evil. This lively, informative, emotionally compelling book identifies the tools one needs to make wise decisions about life’s most challenging conflicts.

In an age of terror, national leaders face this sort of question every day. Should we negotiate with the Taliban? Iran? North Korea? What about terrorist groups holding hostages? In private disputes, you may face devils of your own. A business partner has betrayed you and now wants to negotiate a better deal. Your marriage is ending and your spouse is making extortionist demands. A business competitor has stolen your intellectual property. Your sister is fighting you over an inheritance. In cases such as these, you feel outraged. Your gut tells you to fight it out in court. But when facing a devil — anyone you perceive as a harmful adversary — it may make more sense to negotiate rather than fight, says Robert Mnookin, the internationally renowned leader in the art of negotiation. How do you decide? In Bargaining with the Devil, Mnookin provides tools for confronting adversaries of all kinds. Using eight conflicts drawn from history (including fascinating examples such as Churchill's approach to Hitler, and Nelson Mandela's response to South Africa's apartheid regime), as well as his own professional experience, he offers a framework that applies equally to international conflicts and everyday life. 'There is no easy, categorical answer,' Mnookin warns. 'Sometimes you should bargain with the Devil and other times you should refuse.' The challenge lies in making wise decisions in particular circumstances. This book shows you how.

The art of negotiation—from one of the country’s most eminent practitioners and the Chair of the Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation. One of the country’s most eminent practitioners of the art and science of negotiation offers practical advice for the most challenging conflicts—when you are facing an adversary you don’t trust, who may harm you, or who you may even feel is evil. This lively, informative, emotionally compelling book identifies the tools one needs to make wise decisions about life’s most challenging conflicts.

Conflict is inevitable, in both deals and disputes. Yet when clients call in the lawyers to haggle over who gets how much of the pie, traditional hard-bargaining tactics can lead to ruin. Too often, deals blow up, cases don’t settle, relationships fall apart, justice is delayed. Beyond Winning charts a way out of our current crisis of confidence in the legal system. It offers a fresh look at negotiation, aimed at helping lawyers turn disputes into deals, and deals into better deals, through practical, tough-minded problem-solving techniques. In this step-by-step guide to conflict resolution, the authors describe the many obstacles that can derail a legal negotiation, both behind the bargaining table with one’s own client and across the table with the other side. They offer clear, candid advice about ways lawyers can search for beneficial trades, enlarge the scope of interests, improve communication, minimize transaction costs, and leave both sides better off than before. But lawyers cannot do the job alone. People who hire lawyers must help change the game from conflict to collaboration. The entrepreneur structuring a joint venture, the plaintiff embroiled in a civil suit, the CEO negotiating an employment contract, the real estate developer concerned with environmental hazards, the parent considering a custody battle—clients who understand the pressures and incentives a lawyer faces can work more effectively within the legal system to promote their own best interests. Attorneys exhausted by the trench warfare of cases that drag on for years will find here a positive, proven approach to revitalizing their profession.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Learn the negotiation model used by Google to train employees worldwide, U.S. Special Ops to promote stability globally (“this stuff saves lives”), and families to forge better relationships. A 20% discount on an item already on sale. A four-year-old willingly brushes his/her teeth and goes to bed. A vacationing couple gets on a flight that has left the gate. $5 million more for a small business; a billion dollars at a big one. Based on thirty years of research among forty thousand people in sixty countries, Wharton Business School Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Stuart Diamond shows in this unique and revolutionary book how emotional intelligence, perceptions, cultural diversity and collaboration produce four times as much value as old-school, conflictive, power, leverage and logic. As negotiations underlie every human encounter, this immediately-usable advice works in virtually any situation: kids, jobs, travel, shopping, business, politics, relationships, cultures, partners, competitors. The tools are invisible until you first see them. Then they’re always there to solve your problems and meet your goals.

Over the past thirty years, while the United States has turned either a blind or dismissive eye, Iran has emerged as a nation every bit as capable of altering America’s destiny as traditional superpowers Russia and China. Indeed, one of this book’s central arguments is that, in some ways, Iran’s grip on America’s future is even tighter. As ex–CIA operative Robert Baer masterfully shows, Iran has maneuvered itself into the elite superpower ranks by exploiting Americans’ false perceptions of what Iran is—by letting us believe it is a country run by scowling religious fanatics, too preoccupied with theocratic jostling and terrorist agendas to strengthen its political and economic foundations. The reality is much more frightening—and yet contained in the potential catastrophe is an implicit political response that, if we’re bold enough to adopt it, could avert disaster. Baer’s on-the-ground sleuthing and interviews with key Middle East players—everyone from an Iranian ayatollah to the king of Bahrain to the head of Israel’s internal security—paint a picture of the centuries-old Shia nation that is starkly the opposite of the one normally drawn. For example, Iran’s hate-spouting President Ahmadinejad is by no means the true spokesman for Iranian foreign policy, nor is Iran making it the highest priority to become a nuclear player. Even so, Baer has discovered that Iran is currently engaged in a soft takeover of the Middle East, that the proxy method of war-making and co-option it perfected with Hezbollah in Lebanon is being exported throughout the region, that Iran now controls a significant portion of Iraq, that it is extending its influence over Jordan and Egypt, that the Arab Emirates and other Gulf States are being pulled into its sphere, and that it will shortly have a firm hold on the world’s oil spigot. By mixing anecdotes with information gleaned from clandestine sources, Baer superbly demonstrates that Iran, far from being a wild-eyed rogue state, is a rational actor—one skilled in the game of nations and so effective at thwarting perceived Western colonialism that even rival Sunnis relish fighting under its banner. For U.S. policy makers, the choices have narrowed: either cede the world’s most important energy corridors to a nation that can match us militarily with its asymmetric capabilities (which include the use of suicide bombers)—or deal with the devil we know. We might just find that in allying with Iran, we’ll have increased not just our own security but that of all Middle East nations.The alternative—to continue goading Iran into establishing hegemony over the Muslim world—is too chilling to contemplate.

"Contains material adapted and abridged from 'The everything negotiating book' by Angeliqiue Pinet, copyright 2005 by F+W Media, Inc."--T.p. verso.

When discussing being stuck in a "win-win vs. win-lose" debate, most negotiation books focus on face-to-face tactics. Yet, table tactics are only the "first dimension" of David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius' pathbreaking 3-D Negotiation (TM) approach, developed from their decades of doing deals and analyzing great dealmakers. Moves in their "second dimension"—deal design—systematically unlock economic and noneconomic value by creatively structuring agreements. But what sets the 3-D approach apart is its "third dimension": setup. Before showing up at a bargaining session, 3-D Negotiators ensure that the right parties have been approached, in the right sequence, to address the right interests, under the right expectations, and facing the right consequences of walking away if there is no deal. This new arsenal of moves away from the table often has the greatest impact on the negotiated outcome. Packed with practical steps and cases, 3-D Negotiation demonstrates how superior setup moves plus insightful deal designs can enable you to reach remarkable agreements at the table, unattainable by standard tactics.

Describes a method of negotiation that isolates problems, focuses on interests, creates new options, and uses objective criteria to help two parties reach an agreement.

Dante Valentine, Necromancer and bounty hunter, just wants to be left alone. But the Devil has other ideas. The Prince wants Dante. And he wants her now. And Dante and her lover, Japhrimel, have no choice but to answer the Prince's summons. And to fulfill a seemingly simple task: become the Devil's Right Hand, hunt down four demons that have escaped from Hell, and earn His gratitude. It's a shame that nothing is ever easy when it comes to the Devil. Because of course, he doesn't tell Dante the whole truth: there is a rebellion brewing in Hell. And there is a good chance that Lucifer is about to be pushed off the throne. But Dante is getting really tired of being pushed around. And this time, she might be angry enough to take on the Devil himself... Dante Valentine Novels Working for the Devil Dead Man Rising Devil's Right Hand Saint City Sinners To Hell and Back Dante Valentine (omnibus) For more from Lilith Saintcrow, check out: Gallow and Ragged Trailer Park Fae Bannon and Clare The Iron Wyrm Affair The Red Plague Affair The Ripper Affair The Damnation Affair (e-only) Jill Kismet Novels Night Shift Hunter's Prayer Redemption Alley Flesh Circus Heaven's Spite Angel Town Jill Kismet (omnibus) A Romance of Arquitaine Novels The Hedgewitch Queen The Bandit King Blood Call (coming August 2015)