More n more - What I like about this marvellous book of Allan is the illustrated Gestures. The eye signals and Hand-to-face gestures are simply terrific illustrated readings and Allan sure has deep roots to indepth study of Body Language, it seems. Hand and arm gestures,way of using cigars,cigerettes, glasses, head gestures, courtship gestures and signals and more wide areas are selected which is very interesting. A good Interesting read and good to explore.


If you sell anything, including your ideas --- study this book!   September 18, 2006
 80 out of 86 found this review helpful

This is a fascinating book! What I liked most were the many illustrations demonstrating the authors' points throughout the book. Read the text though--there is so much more to this book. The author's sense of humor, though a little dry, added entertainment to an already enlightening read. I especially liked the courtship section. It is amazing that women send signals an average of 5 times before the men they are interested in respond. It just shows you how dense we men are. I found it unsettling that if you are interested in another woman at a party, the woman you are with will pick up your signal is a New York minute. And, if another woman starts flirting with you from across a room, the woman you are with will send recognizable body language to the other female: "hands off, he's mine--you're looking at trouble."

After reading this book, I guess I will never go into another meeting without subconsciously, or consciously, trying to recall the lessons in this book. I hope someone in the Harvard business school considers teaching this text in a course.

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Body Language Experts need a Writing Expert   December 12, 2006
 34 out of 35 found this review helpful

This book is full of information, but it is poorly presented. The authors may know what they are talking about, but it's hard to tell. It's like that poorly written term paper your friend asked you to proofrean and you had to completely rewrite. I learned more from the Introduction of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Body Language."

My main beef with this book is that after reading it, I know a lot about the "basics" of body language, but not really how to read it. They take a lot of time to point out that you have to look at "clusters" instead of any one signal, and then spend the rest of the book interpreting individual symbols! They also tend to present most of the gestures as "absolutes" or definite, while every other book warns you that all gestures can have multiple interpretations and you must be careful.

Honestly, not a bad reference, but hardly "Definitive." don't make it the only book you read!


Belief or Theory?   December 5, 2006
 19 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book has a lot of generalizations in it. This book almost always mentions the "what" of body language; but, I found it rarely gave the "why" or "how". When the book did give a "why" or "how", it was usually expressed as a belief strictly of the author's view. When I bought this book, I didnt want someone's opinion; but rather, I wanted the facts. The book does give statistics; however, correlation is not necessarily causation. Correlations dont always reveal absolute facts; but, maybe just patterns cluing in to possible facts. The book often stated what gestures meant for males or females; but, rarely stated that the gestures are open to ambiguity, since, males and females are not completely dictated by their hormone distributions or roles that society expects from them. Each male or female has different perceptions aside from hormone distributions and society roles; thus, all gestures are open to ambiguity; but, this book presents its beliefs pretty much on their own (presented mainly as beliefs of the author with no factual reason as to why A possibly means or does mean B), which makes me believe this book has logical gaps that could be filled to be more accurate. I would have appreciated the possible meaning for all gestures more than the believed meaning for all gestures.