Smart Work
Lisa Marshall & Lucy Freedman
Kendall/Hunt Publishing   ISBN 0-7872-0491-9
This book is copyrighted 1995, and it shows.  Sad to say, the authors, whilst claiming to have an understanding of how life in the workplace is changing, are actually offering an analysis based on the kind of "blue sky" thinking that dominated the business press in the early 1990's when business process re-engineering (BPR) and the like were being hailed as the greatest things since sliced bread, guaranteed to improve any business beyond recognition.
It was, in fact, the golden era of the management consultancy firms, and of their prophets of a new dawn for business methodologies, such as the seemingly ubiquitous Tom Peters.
Or to put it amnother way, it was a time when many businesses were so deep in bullshit that they couldn't see what the heck was going on.

And bullshit it was.  BPR, for example, turned out to be a rather expensive process that failed at least 9 times out of 10 - and that's looking at things through very rose-tinted glasses indeed!

The authors present, over 15 chapters, their "Syntax Model" which yjey claim will help the reader to master the "New Workplace Game."  As it turned out, the "Brave New Workplace" never turned up - we just got the dazzlingly stupid mantra: "We have to do more with less" (surely even a 10 year old knows that what you get from "less." in the long run, is "less"?).
And even if things had gone the way this book predicts, readers would have been left unsatisfied since out of those 15 chapters, only Chapter 10 is of any consequernce.  And even then I'm not sure if it is really rather good, or it just seems good compared in comparison with the rest of the book.  Either way, one eight page chapter, plus the excellent "Moment of Choice" exercise on page 114 are hardly enough to justify an entire book.

To be blunt, the only reason I've included this review is that the authors do make rather lacklustre use of some NLP concepts and techniques (though this receives scant recognition in the text (see, for example, the single paragraph, plus footnote, on page 92).
Anyway, in my opinion it would be a waste of my time and yours to go any further with this review.  The book was based on false premises when it was originally written and published, and time has simply served to make it even more redundant.
Recommendation:   Ignore this book and help save a tree.

Conversations
Richard Bandler and Owen Fitzpatrick
Mysterious Publications   ISBN 0-9551353-0-3
Owen Fitzpatrick rells me that he wrote this book with the intention of presenting NLP in a new way as compared with the many "introductions" already on the market; and to provide an insight into Richard Bandler's philosophies in the present day.  Within that brief, for the benefit of people who are genuinely interested in NLP - whether as newcomers or experienced practitioners - the book is intended to show how simple NLP is.

There is, however, a further intention - to give "examples of how I developed and improved from our conversations", and unfortunately these intentions, as well-meaning as they may appear, seem to me to also contain the seeds of the book's downfall.

First and foremost, in my opinion there is far too much about Owen Fitzpatrick, and far too little useful material from Richard Bandler.
All of Bandler's other collaborations have been virtually seamless so that it felt as though the reader were dealing with just one author.  In this book exactly the opposite is true.  Except for maybe half-a-dozen exceptions (at most) what the book actually contains is not conversations but snippets from various interviews (Bandler being interviewed by Fitzpatrick), interspersed with a great deal of padding, much of which consists of an episodic account of Fitzpatrick's life history.

Added to that I felt that much of the book reflected a kind of conflict of perspectives.  On the one hand Bandler is treated as some kind of guru, as though his views on every aspect of life were worth framing for posterity.  Yet at the same time his contributions are always hedged about with commentary, explanations and so on which, to my mind, usually add precisely nothing.  For example:

(Fitzpatrick has asked Bandler for suggestions for helping people with their health.  Part of Bandler's answer goes like this:)

RB:	The more you keep introducing new things, the more vibrant I think your body will stay. ... The more you keep things the same, the more the body habituates to it and it does very little good.  In fact, at a certain point I think it becomes counter-productive ....

To which Fitzpatrick adds:

"What Richard was pointing out was that varying our disciplines and habits is a good idea because when the body gets used to certain things, they do not always have as positive an effect as when they were introduced."
(page 165)

Yet just a few pages later we are told:

"I thanked Richard for his words of wisdom.  It was time to head back to my hotel room.  I walked with my tape recorder in my hand through the streets of Edinburgh as his words resonated through my head.  So many things were becoming clear for me.  Many of the answers I learned from him, I had experienced on my own already, but he had a phenomenal ability to articulate them brilliantly."
(page 168)

Hmmmm.
At this point I found myself wondering: If Bandler's powers of articulation are so phenomenal and brilliant, why was it necessary to paraphrase his comments as though they needed clarification?
I never did figure that one out.

Secondly, as interesting as Bandler's ideas often are, this text is extremely badly edited, in my opinion, with little attention to whether what Bandler is saying is useful or pertinent to NLP - or just Bandler "in full flight", so to speak.

Towards the end of the book, for instance, in a section called "How to Change the World", part of the author's summation of a relatively long quote from Bandler goes like this:

"To change the world, Richard was proposing the idea of education and integration.  To educate people about different religions, ideologies, creeds and perspectives.  To integrate them from all sorts of backgrounds."
(p. 267)

Which might seem like fair comment, except that (a) it is neither new or innovative; (b) it has nothing much to do with NLP; and (c) it is both simplistic and unrealistic since the people who most are most separationist-minded and confrontational (on all sides) are the people most likely to block all efforts at change through education and least likely to countenance any kind of integration at any level.  As a friend of mine, Oz Guinness, once pointed out, to make a difference you have to deal with people as they are, now, NOT as you think they ought to be.

The author also seems to overlook the fact that the book may be read by non-NLPers.  For example, on the subject of people who set themselves unrealistically high goals, Bandler is quoted as saying (amongst other things):

With someone who makes a perfect image of themselves, I would change the picture.  It's as simple as that.  If they won't change the picture, I smack them once or twice and I tell them to change the picture.  Typically they do...or I make it worse.  I've had people come in who have told me they were going to kill themselves because they didn't get this job or they didn't get that girl or their life didn't fit their plan.  I'd say, "'You don't have to do that.  I'll do it for you and I'll do it right now.'  I pull out a huge knife and start across the room and they always shout, 'Wait', and I say, 'What am I waiting for?' ..."
(p. 138)

Readers who have been around NLP long enough will be sufficiemtly familiar with Bandler's way of expressing himself to know better than to take such comments absolutely literally.  Critics, on the other hand, are only to pleased to quote stuff like this as though it somehow invalidates NLP.  And even for newcomers with a constructive attitude to NLP, but who aren't so well up on these things, I wonder what kind of impression of Bandler and NLP this might give them?  Possibly not a very positive one?

Thirdly, as part of his answer to my question regarding the intended audience for this book, Fitzpatrick refers to teaching people "how simple NLP actually is."

Well, Bandler's style of training by "unconscious installation" is indeed "simple", in a sense - yet it needs to be expertly applied if it is to work.
Given the number of little stories in this book, it may be that it is meant to teach the basics of NLP using the unconscious installation approach.  If so then, by comparison with the excellent Persuasion Engineering by Richard Bandler and John La valle, this book is a bust.  It is my perception that if I had been reading this book without a substantial grounding in NLP I would have very little understanding, conscious or unconscious, as regards what NLP is, how it can be used, what techniques are involved, etc.
In fact even with a reasonable amount of prior knowledge I still don't think I got much from reading this book (which is supposed to cater for both newcomers and "those experienced with NLP").

Relatively few books are a complete waste of time, and this one, like many others, definitely has it's moments. "Chapter" 19 - The Beliefs and States of Success - for example is right on the money, and several of the exercises are well worth doing.  But that's probably only a couple of dozen pages at most, out of 281.
Simply having access to someone like Richard Bandler just isn't enough, a writer has to know how to translate what they get into a form that will be useful to others, not just to themselves.  In my opinion this book is so thoroughly self-absorbed, and so bogged down in an unproductive kind of hero worship that it almost completely fails to make that crucial transistion.
As nice a bloke as I believe Owen to be, I cannot find any reason to give this book even a 1 star rating.
Not Recommended.

NLP & Relationships
Robin Prior and Joseph O'Connor
Element (HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd)   ISBN 0-7225-3868-5
Given that the previous product of this writing team (Successful Selling with NLP, reviewed elsewhere on this site) was, in my opinion, a "lemon," I would have liked to be able to give this one a better rating.  But unfortunately I can't.

The book is essentially based on a model of what the authors call our three "voices" - Instinctive, Conditioned and Intellectual.  I've no idea where they got it from, or whether they simply invented it themselves, but either way it has nothing to do with NLP.
Anyway, in Chapter 1 we are introduced to Our Instinctive Voice, in what turns out to be a discourse of semi-nonsense on the subject of genes and evolution.
By "semi-nonsense" I mean that whilst it isn't totally wrong, so much of it is so wide of the mark that you'd be better skipping the whole thing.

For example, we're treated to the well-worn myth that lions select as their prey animals which are sick, weak and/or the slowest runners (page 10).  Trouble is, live research (rather than out dated ivory-tower theorising) indicates that predators on the African veldt tend to select prey on the basis of their physical proximity - regardless of physical condition - apparently on the basis that they won't expend so much energy overall.

It could be argued that the old/weak/young myth is so widely believed that the authors have a good excuse for repeating it.  Less easy to explain is the claim that "swans ... die of a broken heart when their partner dies" (page 14)!  What?  ALL swans?  ANY swans?
What's being quoted here is one of the down-beat endings for the "Swan Lake" fairy story.  Not quite what you might expect to find being cited as fact in the middle of such a discussion.  Until you realise this chapter isn't so much science as a pale imitation, albeit on a grand scale.

And just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water - along comes Chapter 1's mate - Chapter 2.

Chapter 2 - Our Conditioned Voice - is mind numbingly (and I do mean "numbingly") long, taking up nearly a third of the book all by itself.  This fact alone should have set off alarm bells, because inordinately long chapters (the last 5 chapters take up a mere 92 pages in total) almost always indicate a problem - usually a tendency to become unfocused and rambling.  And that's certainly what has happened here.
Of the chapters on the so-called three voices (Chapters 1, 2 and 3), the first is 24 pages, the third is a mere stripling at 13 pages, but the second is no less than 52 pages in total!  Add to this a totally confusing set of subheadings with no clear indication of the various levels of "nesting", and I freely confess I had completely lost track - and interest - long before I got to the end of the chapter.  Because although Chapter 2 quickly moved on from the scientific pretentions of Chapter 1, it soon resorted to some different kinds of twaddle.

As early as page 26 we are told that "we have a fantastic capacity to simply delete what we sense."  Or do we?  Surely that should surely have read something like "we have a fantastic capacity for ignoring, at the conscious level, a vast majority of what we sense"?  Not only because this is allegedly a book about NLP, but also because it is far more accurate.

Next, starting at page 31, we are introduced to "the neurological levels developed by American trainer Robert Dilts to clarify the different levels of the conditioned voice."
"Clarify"?
Surely they jest!  All other considerations apart, the sentence itself is an example of what is known in NLP as syntactic ambiguity.  That is to say, as written the sentence could mean exactly what the wording says:

Robert Dilts developed his "levels" model for use in explaining the different levels of our "conditioned voice" model.
Which is certainly not the case.  Or:

We are using one of Robert Dilts' "levels" models in order to make it clear what our "conditioned voice" model is all about.
Which also isn't quite what the original sentence actually means.

Firstly, the version of the "levels" model in this book is not true to any of the versions of Dilts' model as set out in Changing with NLP (reviewed elsewhere on this site).
Apart from anything else the book goes on to say (very next sentence) "The first level is identity."  That's the "first" level?  Not in Dilts' models it ain't - "environment" is the first level.  Nor is there any explanation as to why "Behaviour" and "Capabilities" are lumped together (under the subheading "Skills and Actions" in the text) though they are kept separate in Dilts' model.
Moreover, given that we are for some unspecified reason, working through the "levels" in reverse order, that still leaves the question: Whatever happened to "spirituality" or "mission"?  Are these subjects not included in our "conditioning".  I think they are!
Strangely enough, on page 55 (still Chapter 2) the levels model is re-introduced, only this time it starts with "First the environment level."  And off we go in the opposite direction (though whilst "Beliefs and Values" have apparently split up to become two separate levels now, once again there is no trace of the "Mission" level).

And there's more!
In Chapter 3 the so-called levels model appears yet again (page 82) when we are told to beware of "escalating up the logical levels ... [because] every time you move up a level, you up the ante significantly, for each level brings more emotion with it."
Says who?  And after the confusion of Chapter 2: Which way is "up"?  (Only the second question is actually answered.)
This reads, to me, like nothing so much as a misinterpretation of Dilts' claim that each move up the "levels" engages more of the "nervous system" - itself an erroneous fantasy, contrary to current knowledge of human neurology, and without a smidgen of supporting evidence.

In short, since the labels aren't being applied to genuine "levels" in the first place, and are presented in a way that conflicts with their inventor's interpretation, what on earth was the point - other than to include a bit of NLP jargon - of mentioning the "neurological levels" at all?

I could go on and on like this.
There is, for example, the line on page 51, "I was 26 before I realized you could get on a train without it being in motion."
"Good grief," I thought, "is this guy a slow developer or what!"  But then I remembered the potted biography of one of the authors which said he "is particularly interested in humour", so maybe it was meant as a joke.  Anyway, just over the page we find that the foregoing examples of learned behaviour have suddenly metamorphosed into "examples of inherited behaviour driven by inherited belief".
Pardon?
Our beliefs are encoded in our genes?  And some people have a gene that stops them understanding that they can arrive at a station before their train is due to leave?  And the gene shuts down in that person's mid-20s?  Well stap me vitals, sir.  Stap me vitals!

Which brings me to the award for the daftest definition in the book, which turns up on page 58 in the section on beliefs:

"... perhaps the best definition is: 'Beliefs are those ideas we accept despite evidence to the contrary.'"

So presumably, if I believe that "Australia" is the name of a real place, and that the sun will appear in the east again tomorrow morning, that's because there IS evidence that Australia is just a figment of someone's imagination; and tomorrow will remain as dark as night all day?
Really?
What a very "interesting" idea.

Another problem is that no one seems to have checked the consistency of the points made,  Thus, for example, on page 129 we are told that:

"We tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behaviour because the intentions are invisible."

Yet straight over the page we have a section headed Mind Reading which starts with a fragment of an argument where one person is judging another person's behaviour on the basis of the first person's interpretation of the intention behind the other person's behaviour.
As in several cases, the contradiction could have been avoided by simply not making the less feasible claim, or by removing it from the finished manuscript.

But my greatest reservation about the book goes much deeper than such errors and inconsistencies.  What jumped out at me when I initially skimmed through the book was the lack of any bibliography, reading list or whatever other than the list of O'Connor's previous books and tapes on page 169.

There are some names in the Acknowledgements section (page ix) but the list isn't particularly impressive.  It includes Eric Berne, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins and Desmond Morris, with the rather pretentious introduction: "We would also like to acknowledge the following for their work in the fields of human behaviour and relationships".
Well jolly good show, but does that mean the authors have actually read those people's work?  And if so, what specific texts did they utilise for this book?
After Morris the list goes on to cite several more people, including the authors of populist books such as Brain Sex, Why Men Don't Iron, Women Who Love too Much and Why Do We Fall in Love?, plus several more people whom I've personally never heard of and couldn't find on the Internet.  Once again, without a proper bibliography and/or list of references (I tracked down the book titles myself) we cannot know what material by these authors was used in this book.

On the same tack, what is the point of listing the authors of various books of "pop psychology" whilst apparently ignoring the work of internationally renowned researchers in this area such as Dr.John Gottman?  When a book overlooks such seminal research on marital stability and divorce one really has to ask whether it is anything more than the personal opinions of its authors, with a modicum of NLP, all based on readings from a few books on pop psychology.
If it were true, this would help to explain why the subject of "commitment" (arguably THE most essential feature of almost any relationship) gets only one mention in the index, which points to just one or two paragraphs on the final page of the main text.

Sad to say, whilst this book does contain some occasional points of interest, it is poorly written (uninspired and uninspiring), repetitive, contradictory and offers very little that you couldn't find in many other, better written, better researched and far more useful books on this subject.
Recommendation:   Just one star, based on the vague possibility that someone, somewhere might just get something worthwhile from it.  But I wouldn't bet on it   *