Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight [Anglais] [Broché]

Have you ever fought with someone you thought was evil? Ever felt betrayed by a friend, a family member, a business partner? In these situations, emotions are fundamentally intertwined with any decision to negotiate; in fact, the very act of negotiation may attack one's identity. Moral righteousness is a powerful thing, and notions of right and wrong/good and evil can drive people to forgo negotiation even when it would be in their best interests. This is the struggle that is explored through the seven real-world scenarios in the book. Mnookin analyzes the difficult decisions in each chapter, delving into the possible alternatives to negotiation, providing creative solutions, and assessing the decisions made by the parties. The scenarios range from the harrowing ordeal of negotiating with Nazis to save Jewish lives, to the bitterness of a divorce settlement - all with the common thread of scrutinizing the seemingly impossible task of knowing when to engage and when to refuse (my favorite chapter in particular is the one that focuses on Nelson Mandela's decision to negotiate with the National Party). The book reads like a novel - each story is unique, gripping, and monumental in its own way, yet Mnookin's writing makes them easily accessible to the reader. I found myself completely immersed into each situation (for example, I still cannot decide whether I would have ever negotiated with the KGB). It also provides a critical lens to analyze how to deal with other "evil" actors, such as terrorist regimes, etc.

Decisions to negotiate are everywhere. The book does more than just describe other people's negotiation decisions - Mnookin provides a great framework to approach negotiation in general, taking you through each step and cautioning the reader against falling into common traps such as demonization and moralism. He introduces the fantastic "Spock" character to help conceptualize the "rational" decisionmaker, and yet he does not advocate that this type of analysis is always best; Mnookin fully understands the nuances of human emotion and identity, as is evident in his storytelling and perceptive analysis. He never pretends that any negotiation is ever easy. In sum, the book is a fantastic read. I would recommend it to anyone.

Mnookin begins Bargaining with the Devil with the important and timely question of whether you should negotiate with parties you view as evil and uncompromising, and ends with the simple and commonsensical answer: "Not always, but more often than you feel like it."

For examples of negotiating with "evil," Mnookin divides the book into "global devils," "business devils," and "family devils." In the section on global devils, Mnookin explains why he thinks Rudolf Kasztner was right to negotiate with Adolf Eichmann, why Winston Churchill was right not to negotiate with Hitler, and why Nelson Mandela was right to negotiate with the apartheid regime in South Africa. In the other two sections, Mnookin draws on his experience as a mediator and relates more difficult but successful mediations involving IBM v. Fujitsu, the San Francisco symphony, and family law disputes.

While Mnookin's political examples are well-researched and interesting in revealing the details of the decision-making process of the various actors, and while his examples of difficult business and domestic mediations exhibit him as an adept and successful mediator, conspicuously lacking from the book are developed or detailed theories or principles of negotiation that weave the examples together. As a result, the book seems forced and fails to come together as a whole.

Praiseworthy for its ambitious topic and call for conflict resolution, Bargaining with the Devil remains worth reading. But the book's lesson also remains simple: Don't demonize your opponent or overly-moralize your own position or you may end up worse off.

If you're looking for a detailed book on theories and strategies of negotiation, you should look elsewhere, like to Mnookin's own Beyond Winning or Fisher's Getting to Yes.

Ryan Vlasak
Bracamontes & Vlasak, P.C.

This book is a lot of fun! It's quite ambitious, trying to be a number of things at the same time, and I think it largely succeeded.
I expected a combination of philosophical treatise, a la Book of Job or Faustus, and negotiation handbook. Mnookin didn't disappoint on either front, although that's not ultimately what the book's about. It does raise, and sometimes answer, fascinating questions of moral and political philosophy, exploring whether negotiation ever degenerates into "pandering to evil" and the conflicting obligations of a leader to his constituents and his conscience (think Profiles in Courage). And while not a how-to negotiation guide, it provides a fascinating window into the work of a master negotiator, chronicling some of the author's most impressive interventions.
Bargaining with the Devil also has a bit of a self-help flavor to it, laying out the many intellectual and psychological traps that thwart many of our efforts to negotiate thorny situations at work and in our private lives.
Above all though, its a book of stories, some historical and some intensely private. Because most of the chapters are self-contained tales of individuals who faced agonizing decisions of whether or not to negotiate with perceived devils, it's easy to pick this book up for an hour or so on a flight, by the pool or before bed -- and very hard to put it down!