I thought the book was great! It's also the only book on negotiation that I've ever read (aside from Art of the Deal out of curiosity, which isn't actually abou

I thought the book was great! It's also the only book on negotiation that I've ever read (aside from Art of the Deal out of curiosity, which isn't actually about negotiations at all!), so take my views with a grain of salt. If you ignore the stuff your linked comments complain about, which is largely him having an obnoxious writing style and literal too-cool-for-(Harvard)-school attitude (them nerds don't know nothin'!), I found tons of the actual content immediately applicable with lots of return. The thing I absolutely loved about the book was shifting your mindset away from negotiations being these big scary stressful standoffs with winners and losers, and towards them being lighthearted, possibly even fun(!) shared problem solving sessions. That mental shift, and having a box of tools to use, makes navigating tricky situations so much easier. It also make me look forward to previously stressful situations. For instance, I recently bought a new car, which is a process I usually loathe. However, using all the tricks from the book, I was able to negotiate down a crazy amount off our car with the main approach being the "how can I do X?" from the book. There was some back and forth, some huffing and puffing about how it couldn't be done ("we're already taking a loss on this!"), but eventually, after numerous showy checks with the management, we agreed on a price. I legit had a blast the whole time cause the mental state the entire time was "can we solve this problem together?"