Negotiation and Dealmaking
Where transaction value is actually captured or destroyed, from bargaining tactics to the acquirer's post-close arithmetic.
55 books · 7 people behind it · 1 reading lists
Start here
- Never Split the DifferenceChris Voss, Tahl Raz, 2016
- Getting to YesRoger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton, 1981
- Bargaining for AdvantageG. Richard Shell, 1999
- 3-D NegotiationDavid A. Lax, James K. Sebenius, 2006
The people behind it 7
Each person holds a book in this entry or names it in their own tags.
Founders 1
Academics 3
Journalists 3
Reading list — The best books on Negotiation · Superbook
8 books, in the order the list argues for
The negotiation canon starts with a clean thesis: most people treat bargaining as positional warfare, haggling over numbers until someone blinks. Getting to Yes replaced that model with interest-based negotiation — find out what each side actually needs, then design agreements that meet both. That insight, developed at Harvard in the 1980s, still anchors the field. But interests-based negotiation has a problem: it a
Sources: Getting to Yes – Roger Fisher & William Ury (Harvard Negotiation Project) · Never Split the Difference – Chris Voss official site · Harvard Program on Negotiation · Difficult Conversations – Harvard Negotiation Project
Books 55
Sun Tzu · 1900 · Classical strategy: position, deception and choosing when to fight
Thomas C. Schelling · 1960 · Commitment, threats and bargaining; the founding text of strategic conflict
Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton · 1981 · Principled negotiation and BATNA; the field's standard vocabulary.
Robert A. Caro · 2002 · Caro on Johnson's mastery of an institution's levers and incentives
Dale Carnegie · 1936 · The original popular manual on persuasion and handling people
Vance Packard · 1957 · Motivational research and the first popular backlash against it.
Catherine Drinker Bowen · 1966 · The constitutional convention as a long and contested negotiation
G. Richard Shell · 1999 · The best research-grounded bridge between theory and the table.
Doris Kearns Goodwin · 2003 · Lincoln's cabinet of opponents; a study in managing rivals
David A. Lax, James K. Sebenius · 2006 · Adds setup and deal design to tactics; the dealmaker's version.
Chris Voss, Tahl Raz · 2016 · Insider account from FBI hostage negotiation, applied commercially.
Max H. Bazerman, Margaret A. Neale · 1992 · Cognitive bias applied to bargaining; anchoring and the winner's curse.
Robert F. Bruner · 2005 · M&A failures studied as a class rather than as anecdotes.
Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler · Patterson et al. address high-stakes conversations where opinions differ and emotions run hot — conditions that describe most negotiations worth having. The STATE model and the concept of the pool of shared meaning give practitioners concrete tools rather than abstract principles.
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Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen · From the Harvard Negotiation Project, this examines the negotiations we avoid: performance reviews, relationship ruptures, disagreements about fault. The three-conversation model (what happened, feelings, identity) explains why these go wrong and provides a structure for having them anyway.
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Roger Fisher, William Ury · The founding text of interest-based negotiation. Fisher and Ury's core move — separating positions from interests, then inventing options for mutual gain — remains the clearest framework for turning zero-sum standoffs into joint problem-solving. Read it first; everything else responds to it.
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Adam Grant · Grant's research on givers, takers, and matchers reframes negotiation as a long-run game. Takers win individual negotiations; givers build the networks and reputations that produce better deal flow over time. The evidence changes how you think about concessions and relationship investment.
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Robert B. Cialdini · Cialdini's six principles — reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity — are the persuasion levers that operate before formal negotiation begins. Understanding them is partly defensive (recognizing when they're being used on you) and partly offensive (deploying them ethically).
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Douglas Stone, Sheila Heen · Stone and Heen focus on the receiving side of evaluative conversations — performance reviews, criticism, unsolicited advice. Negotiators spend a lot of energy crafting messages and far less understanding why feedback triggers defensiveness. This book corrects that imbalance.
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Daniel Kahneman · Kahneman's synthesis of behavioral economics is the cognitive science underpinning every negotiation tactic. Anchoring, loss aversion, framing effects, and the planning fallacy — understanding why these biases operate, not just that they exist, makes you harder to exploit and more honest about your own irrationality.
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Andrew WilkinsonCharles de VaulxFrank MartinMichael MauboussinMohnish PabraiRational Capital Investment FundSeth KlarmanStewart BrandAbi Tyas TunggalAlbert WengerAlfred LinAmy HoodBill GatesBryan JohnsonCharlie MungerDaniel BurkaDavid CancelDavid HellmannEv WilliamsJason FriedJason ZweigJulie ZhuoMarc AndreessenNassim Nicholas TalebNaval RavikantPaul BassatRay DalioRon ConwaySahil BloomSahil LavingiaSam AltmanSatya NadellaSophie BakalarTristan Harris
T4 Influence
Robert B. Cialdini, PhD · 1983
Andrew WilkinsonCharlie MungerChristopher BeggChristopher BloomstranJim CollinsMohnish PabraiNaval RavikantNick SleepPatrick CollisonAdam RobinsonAlexis OhanianDavid CancelDerek SiversGuy KawasakiMatej LatinMax LevchinMichael BatkoNate O'BrienNathan MurphyNir EyalNoah KaganPatrick O'ShaughnessyPeter ThielRamit SethiSam ParrSamy KamkarSuperbook reading listsThe Barefoot InvestorThe Rational WalkTobi LütkeTristan HarrisWarren Buffett
Rebecca Shafir · 2000
Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert B. Cialdini · 2008
T4 Talk Lean
Alan Palmer · 2013 · Short method for direct conversations and difficult requests
Chris Anderson · 2016
Blair Warren
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