Review of
Instaread Summary
of Presence Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges,
by Amy Cuddy
Three of five stars
As this summary
makes clear, there is really nothing new in the book. The main theme is an
emphasis on “presence,” that obvious but ill-defined projection of confidence
and ability. A great deal of the emphasis is on body language, how the way you
move as perceived by others.
I remembered
reading about body language many years ago, so a search was conducted looking
for books on body language that were published before 1980. The books ranged
from books by academics to mass market paperbacks. Without question, the most
interesting books were the ones about reading the tell poker players
unknowingly project that their opponents exploit.
Having said
that there is nothing new being reported in this summary, the next step is to
ask questions about whether it matters. From this summary, the answer is that
the key takeaways certainly tell you the value of having presence and
confidence. Yet, simply telling someone the value of developing presence is not a yellow brick road to
achieving it.
From this
summary, it is clear that this is largely another self-esteem book. Anything in
this classification is of little value to the people that already have presence
and of little value to the people that have a significant shortage. After
reading this summary, I came away convinced that only people in the middle have
anything to gain from reading the entire book.
This book was made available for free for review
purposes.
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