Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

How it reads

Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It is narrative nonfiction (negotiation memoir and guide, specifically), and its dominant mood is tense. The suspense is the kind you feel in your shoulders. It moves fast: plot-driven and hard to put down, the kind of book that carries you along even when you're tired.

It's set in an international setting, in the present day, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, justice and power and politics. In weight it's light and escapist — easy to fall into.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending resolves happily. At 274 pages it's a quick read. It's a mega-bestseller — the book everyone seems to have read.