AnyBook4Less.com	Find the Best Price on the Web Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Home  |  Store List  |  FAQ  |  Contact Us  |
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money Keyword AuthorISBN

Title: Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life by Paul Ekman ISBN: 0-8050-7275-6 Publisher: Times Books Pub. Date: 07 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

Your Country USA Canada United Kingdom Australia Austria Belgium France Germany Italy Netherlands Switzerland Currency AutoUSD CAD GBP EUR AUD CHF Delivery Only cheapest delivery All delivery options Include Used Books Are you a club member of: Barnes and Noble Books A Million Chapters.Indigo.ca

Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting science, but poorly organized and written.
Comment: Who isn't captivated by the unspoken language of expression. Very few in science today would dispute that non-verbal expression contributes a signficant amount of "information rate transfer" in every human to human exchange.

That's why I ordered this book. I was curious to know how the mechanics of non-verbal expression (manifested in the face) generally worked. Paul Ekman has been at the forefront of this research since the mid-sixties. Before ordering, I spent some time at his site (of same name as the book) and was impressed enough to do what the site pushes you to do: order the book...

I was mildly dissapointed. While the book has plenty of interesting factoids, from the beginning it felt way overwritten. Almost like the author had a 24 page lesson plan and decided to stretch it out to 240 pages. In my opinion, there is allot of "fluff". Granted, some may be interested in reading 20 pages about the fact that emotions are nature (vs. nurture) across all cultures...well, that was hotly debated 20 years ago, now it's generally accepted as fact...move on.

The meat of my issue with the book is that it should have been a lesson plan. My favorite part of the book is at the end when there are 14 pages of faces with barely registered emotion on them that you have to discern the meaning in. I wanted that throughout the book.

If you have a particular fascination with this subject, I'd recommend ordering the CD's and using the interactive lesson plan. Skip the book.

Hope this was helpful.

Rating: 3
Summary: Not a lot of useful information
Comment: I got this book after reading Malcolm Gladwell's lovely New Yorker piece on Paul Ekman. I was looking for an accessable introduction to FACS, Ekman's facial coding system, but this book wasn't it. Emotions Revealed is perhaps too accessable, with copious fluff and very little real content.

After an introduction to Ekmans work, the book is divided into chapters on each emotion. Each chapter is further subdivided into: 1) anecdotes about people feeling emotions (useless), 2) at most two pages on the facial expression associated with the emotion (the meat, if you will), 3) speculation on why you might feel the emotion (useless), and 4) suggestions on how to react if you see this emotion on others (situation dependant & therefore useless).

Ekman's strength is in the clinical study of facial expression, not in writing anecdotal psychobabble. Skip this book if you already know the gist of his work.

Rating: 5
Summary: Get the training CDs as well!
Comment: The book is outstanding but you should definitely get the 2 TRAINING CDs on microexpressions, available from the website of the same name as the book.

Similar Books:

	Title: Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage (Revised and Updated Edition) by Paul Ekman ISBN: 0393321886 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 10 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95
	Title: What the Face Reveals: Basic and Applied Studies of Spontaneous Expression Using the Facial Action Coding System (Series in Affective Science) by Paul Ekman, Erika Rosenberg ISBN: 0195104471 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1998 List Price(USD): $54.50
	Title: The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin, Paul Ekman, Philip Prodger ISBN: 0195158067 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: November, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95
	Title: Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama by DANIEL GOLEMAN ISBN: 0553801716 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.95
	Title: Unmasking the Face by Paul Ekman, Wallace V. Friesen ISBN: 1883536367 Publisher: Malor Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95