What I’ve Been Reading

Before reading this book, I didn’t know there was a whole field of research on the history of emotion, and it turns out it’s fascinating stuff! The field looks at variations in how emotions are understood across cultures and historical periods, both in terms of how they were experienced and how they were expressed. This […]

This is another excellent book, just released this year, incorporating some of the most recent research about emotions in an accessible and often entertaining way – occasionally this book made me laugh out loud. The author has written many other terrific books, and has also written episodes of Star Trek and helped Stephen Spielberg and

In this book Snyder introduces his theory of hope thinking. You may recall that Claire Holland and I discussed this in some detail in our recent conversation. There’s also a lesson on hope and conflict in our new Working With Emotions online course. The first three chapters of the book cover discovery, measuring and developing

I’ve long admired Tammi Lenski’s work in the conflict resolution field (check out her other book The Conflict Pivot), but only recently discovered this book (now in its 3rd edition) in which she discusses how to market your ADR business using mediation principles. This book provides such a different approach to the usual business marketing

The subtitle of the book is What the art of debating can teach us about listening better and disagreeing well. The author is Australia’s two-time world debating champion, and the book will certainly teach you a lot about how debating works, and how it compares with the kinds of disagreements we have in everyday life.

This book is for all the language nerds out there (my hand is held up high!) who love exploring how words can structure our reality. As a big fan of metaphor, I couldn’t resist! Some of this book was over my head – linguistics and other concepts that I struggled to understand – but there

I recently read this overview of different mediation approaches and I was incredibly impressed with the author’s understanding of their similarities and differences. I’ve taught comparative mediation subjects in postgraduate programs for many years, and it’s rare to find someone who can so clearly explain each different approach, and more importantly, do so in a

I bought this book expecting more specific content about different aspects of psychology and their relationship to mediation. It doesn’t really include this information, rather it provides a broad overview about how psychological, existential, and phenomenological thought apply to mediation practice. What the book does provide, however, is a very nuanced description of mediation, from

As I’ve been putting the finishing touches on our new Managing Emotions in Conflict online course, this book has become my essential reference source. The book explains complex concepts in simple language, with many practical (and often entertaining) examples. The book will challenge many things that you thought you knew about emotions, and how they

The Nagoski sisters wrote this book for any woman who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything she had to do, and yet still worried she was not doing “enough”. Sound familiar? With backgrounds as a sex educator and a choral conductor, they might seem unlikely experts on stress. However, what they bring to the