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alatarie's review against another edition
3.0
Very insightful, but the book could have been shorter.
jehntooch's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
4.0
A whole new meaning to choose your words wisely.
This book was recommended to me by my Director as she knows I am not a fan of sales books (read: I hate them). This was a solid recommendation and quick read. I appreciated the psychology behind the science of language, and have some great takeaways around how not only to present data and tasks to my team, but also for my work on any projects/decks that will be either client facing or board facing.
Jonah examines language through spoken and written means. Relating language to not just personal relationships, but professional (internal and external), along with song lyrics, dialogues of plays, TV shows and films.
Storytelling is truly an art. Jonah put together a high level, fast paced book with plenty of sources.
I wish the endnotes were footnotes. I don’t love having to flip back and forth. It ends up distracting me from the text.
This book was recommended to me by my Director as she knows I am not a fan of sales books (read: I hate them). This was a solid recommendation and quick read. I appreciated the psychology behind the science of language, and have some great takeaways around how not only to present data and tasks to my team, but also for my work on any projects/decks that will be either client facing or board facing.
Jonah examines language through spoken and written means. Relating language to not just personal relationships, but professional (internal and external), along with song lyrics, dialogues of plays, TV shows and films.
Storytelling is truly an art. Jonah put together a high level, fast paced book with plenty of sources.
I wish the endnotes were footnotes. I don’t love having to flip back and forth. It ends up distracting me from the text.
xsleepyshadows's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Solid read with a good length. Looks at the persuasiveness of language and context of some situations. Especially a great read for folks who work with the public I think especially.
amandapanda27's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
buildingbooklove's review
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Fascinating and helpful! I had so many takeaways!
bootman's review against another edition
5.0
Man, I honestly think at some point in the future, Jonah Berger, a best-selling author of pop-psych books, will go down as one of the biggest hacks of all time. When I first got into non-fiction, Jonah Berger was some of the first books I read, and I absolutely loved them. Then, as I learned about junk science, the replication crisis in the social sciences and the like, I realized that there’s a high likelihood that Berger is just writing a bunch of BS. This book was no different, and it finally made sense once I got to the epilogue: this book is based on the junk science of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor and specializes in the psychology of marketing and selling. Basically, he makes an insane amount of money writing stuff and doing speaking engagements that big companies love. Berger presents the most bogus studies as a way to say, “Do this, and you’ll 100x your sales and profits.” This new book focuses on language.
It’s just mind-blowing the studies he references because anyone with half a brain and is slightly skeptical will have their alarms going off. The entire book is just “We looked at X, and when they made this small change to their wording, they saw tremendous success!”. Unlike good books with research, he never challenges the findings and explains why they’re correct. He just throws a million studies at the reader to back his claims and present amazing results without ever mentioning sample sizes or anything relevant to the scientific method.
I may be completely wrong, but I don’t think I am. And I think time will prove me right, especially if someone who debunks this kind of stuff ever comes across Berger’s work.
Jonah Berger is a Wharton School professor and specializes in the psychology of marketing and selling. Basically, he makes an insane amount of money writing stuff and doing speaking engagements that big companies love. Berger presents the most bogus studies as a way to say, “Do this, and you’ll 100x your sales and profits.” This new book focuses on language.
It’s just mind-blowing the studies he references because anyone with half a brain and is slightly skeptical will have their alarms going off. The entire book is just “We looked at X, and when they made this small change to their wording, they saw tremendous success!”. Unlike good books with research, he never challenges the findings and explains why they’re correct. He just throws a million studies at the reader to back his claims and present amazing results without ever mentioning sample sizes or anything relevant to the scientific method.
I may be completely wrong, but I don’t think I am. And I think time will prove me right, especially if someone who debunks this kind of stuff ever comes across Berger’s work.
buddygator's review against another edition
2.5
Just okay. Some new tidbits but it did seem like the author just wanted to be done writing with the last several chapters. Some of it was hard to connect to an application in my own job. Even most of the first few chapters were reminders rather than new info.