Hacker News Books

https://amzn.com/0061438294

There is a great book about body language called What Every Body is Saying by an ex-FBI agent. Excellent read and be forewarned that you'll start seeing other people in a very different light. Heck, it will make you think twice about what and how you say things. On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d... .

The other comments in this thread have the books nailed down. "How to win friends and influence people" and "Influence" are largely considered the best books on the topic. I'm very interested in body language which is very related. If you force yourself to stand confidently, you'll feel it as well the others around you. I found "What Every BODY is Saying" a lot of fun although it's not quite as full of information.

Excellent stuff, go boxing. There's a lot to say for standing up for yourself.

"... But a great many of my friends were bullied, some horribly. I've never been able to understand the mechanics of it very well even after having seen it so many times. ..."

Observing body language should probably be a taught subject in school ~ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/spycatcher/201004/what-e...

An understanding of body language might allow you to see peoples intentions before they give off overt intent. If you want to understand more about decoding & understanding behaviour, talk to http://twitter.com/navarrotells or get a copy "Louder than words" or "What Every Body is Saying" ~ http://jnforensics.com/Books_%26_Videos.html

This article reminds me of a book I read a few years ago, Joe Navarro's "What Every Body Is Saying" [1]. If you're in the business of working with people more than programs, this book might be useful, but even if not, a lot of it was a good intellectual curiosity. There were plenty of things that I got to try noticing and playing with on my own body; for instance, how I hold my hands in any given situation (palms out? palms in?) is a good indicator of how comfortable I am, and it's an interesting experiment to "force" myself to place my hands somewhere other than where they naturally lie, and just lightly observe how it makes me more or less comfortable. (If you're bored in a meeting, I highly recommend giving it a try.)

Thanks for this link.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d...

More specific topics, however:

* "what every body is saying" - how to read/understand body language

* "an astronauts guide to life on earth" - by Chris Hadfield, lots of good general advice

* "speed reading" - for digesting information quickly (albeit, I find with less depth)

* "The 8 traits successful people have in common" - kinda painfully obvious advice, but often it's the context and stories that help you digest a message

* "the lean startup" - wasn't mindblowing but looks aligned with what you've been reading, still worth reading.

My son is ASD (as I probably am). And I want to help him out so that he doesn't have to learn the hard way as I did. I'm going to buy the Social Stories book (mentioned in your link) off Amazon. I'd love to hear any other helpful ideas.

I also read several body language books over the years. The best is What Every Body is Saying, in case that's helpful for anyone. Unfortunately, reading a book is not as good as practicing.

There are reliable tells that imply "pacifying behaviours" for stress, and those can be useful to pay attention to in order to get people to trip up in interrogations, but there are many possible reasons for that kind of stress, including an interrogation itself being a stressor. But people who try to identify lies based on their theories of such tells without intimately knowing that person in advance generally do no better than chance.

(A good book on the subject, which gives a very sober assessment of what body language can actually reliably tell us vs. where you need to thread carefully is Joe Navarro's "What Every Body is Saying" - Navarro is a former FBI agent and trainer)

One thing about body language though - I think it's one thing to read about body language but a very different thing to visually train your brain to recognize it quickly.

I hope to one day make YouTube videos with lots of examples for this purpose. In the meantime, the best book resource I've found for that is the book "What Every Body is Saying", because it contains lots of example pictures.

If you liked this book, here are a few others I enjoyed that cover similar themes. They are all more or less about the psychology underlying every human interaction.

- How to Win Friends and Influence People (a classic by Dale Carnegie)

- Meta-Talk (Gerard I. Nierenberg, Henry H. Calero)

- Games People Play (Eric Berne)

- What Every Body is Saying (Joe Nevarro, Marvin Karlins)

- Conversationally Speaking (Alan Garner)

These books provide a great foundation for anyone who needs to deal with people on a daily basis (ie. everyone), and are especially useful if you want to be aware of fast-talkers trying to take advantage of you.

Navarro wrote a book called "What Every Body is Saying".[0] In it he identifies a number of universal body language patterns and sets out guides for interpreting what they mean based on context.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d...

They're still interesting to look out for, though, as they're helpful hints to let you direct your conversation to probe at areas that makes someone nervous and/or to figure out what someones different tells means.

This book has allowed me to understand what the people around me are saying, without even saying a word!

"Read this book and send your nonverbal intelligence soaring. Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence officer and a recognized expert on nonverbal behavior, explains how to "speed-read" people: decode sentiments and behaviors, avoid hidden pitfalls, and look for deceptive behaviors. You'll also learn how your body language can influence what your boss, family, friends, and strangers think of you."

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1173576.What_Every_Body_...