An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

The author, we're told (both on the back cover and in the Introduction) has been an investment manager, an investment controller and planner, a finance director and a consultant.  I'm surprised, then, that he seriously imagines that the average manager is going to have the time or the patience to work his or her way through this gently rambling text.  In my experience, both as a manager and, more importantly, through talking to numerous managers, they want concise, brief, readily accessible instructional material.  And except in a few isolated patches this book fits none of those criteria.

Communication Excellence, subtitled "Using NLP To Supercharge Your Business Skills", is structured in the form of ten one day courses delivered to a group of senior executives of the hypothetical Whizzitts Ltd.  (The company makes, surprise, surprise, 'whizzitts' - though we never discover what whizzetts are (high speed widgets, perhaps?)).  This is an interesting idea and well executed, and realistic enough to have been the transcript of a real course (though the author tells me it's entirely fictional).

Leaving aside the 'illustrations' - a collection of mediocre cartoons that range from the redundant to the outright grotesque - the author has what I would describe as a delightfully English eccentric style.  Unfortunately, whilst it is highly readable, it is not well-suited to clear explanation.  A two page handout on John McWhirter's Basic Fractal Language Model is 'explained' in less than one full page of text.  The description of 'anchoring', on the other hand, goes on for several pages yet never explains exactly how to set an anchor; indeed, it doesn't even mention that the trigger for an anchor should initially be set before the experience to be anchored reaches its peak, and released as the experience reaches its peak.

Even more importantly, both John McWhirter's Foreword and the author's Introduction seem to be saying that this is a good do-it-yourself book.  What they don't tell you is that most of the exercises assume that the 'trainee' will have at least one, maybe two and occasionally even three assistants on hand.  These exercises make up a sizeable partof the text, but unless the reader has at least one collaborator to assist in carrying out the exercises, they might just as well be blank spaces.

No, I can see how readers wanting to run basic NLP courses might find this book to be full of interesting material.  But a beginners' or managerial guide?  I find that very, very hard to imagine.
Qualified recommendation to would-be trainers with a reasonable amount of prior knowledge * * * *

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

As the primary author, key NLP figure Robert Dilts, explains in the Introduction, "a major portion of [the] book [is] drawn from transcripts of [the] Dynamic Learning Seminar" run by Dilts and his late friend and partner, Todd Epstein.
As a transcript I would guess that this is very well written and well edited representation of the auditory content of the seminar.  But the spoken word isn't all that a seminar is about.  And simply transcribing the spoken content of a seminar doesn't necessarily make a good book.

Much as I enjoyed this book, coming from a lengthy background in teaching and training, my final feeling was one of dissatisfaction.
As a teaching guide to Dynamic Learning, despite the numerous exercises (repeated in an appendix that runs to just over 50 pages!) I didn't feel that the discussion went deep enough to give me a solid, transferable understanding of the ideas behind DL.
As a study of the application of NLP to the field of education, on the other hand, I didn't feel that the discussion was sufficiently wide-ranging.

Having said that, there's a lot of good stuff in this book, including substantial sections on:

• Memory Strategies
• Spelling
• Learning Languages, and
• Creative Writing

... just four of a total of 11 chapters and 8 appendices.
Whilst I can see how experienced teachers who want to know how NLP can enrich their existing practice, might find this quite a useful intoduction, I still feel that good editing (rather than slavish adherence to the transcript format) could have made this a far better book.
So, a basically enthusiastic but qualified recommendation * * * * *

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

It must be said that there are certain elements of the book I found a little idiosyncratic.
For example, the list of presuppositions (page 15) are treated as though they are the 13 basic presuppositions of NLP.  Entry #4: "The map becomes the territory" (which struck me as a somewhat fatalistic observation) is one I have never seen on any other list; whilst entry #12: "Modelling excellent behaviour leads to excellence" seems to hark back to the days of a far 'younger', dewy-eyed version of NLP.  (There is a comment by Leslie Cameron-Bandler, as was, reported on Lee Lady's site - see the links page - which categorically rejects this heavily simplistic view of the power of modelling.)

I was also a little puzzled by some of the entries and categorising in the 'Booklist' (pages 140-141).  The O'Connor and McDermott book Principles of NLP (reviewed on this site) is in the NLP - basic list, whilst Introducing NLP (O'Connor and Seymour - also reviewed on this site) is listed as NLP - more advanced.
Likewise including Tony Robbins' Notes from a Friend as NLP - basic, or listing Covey's Seven Habits anywhere at all, raise interesting questions about the authors' view of what NLP is all about.

And having said all that, as the introduction to this review suggested, my overall response to this book is a definite 'thumbs up'.
As chance would have it, I was actually preparing a 'train-the-trainer' course at the time I read this book, and it certainly sparked off a number of useful insights and ideas.
Although originally written specifically for members of their own specialised branch of 'education', I readily agree with the authors' decision to re-target it at the teaching/training professions as a whole.

Whilst this is still not the NLP-oriented teaching/training book, I personally found it much more accessible than some existing texts which address this topic, such as Dynamic Learning, for example.
Highly recommended for anyone working in the fields of education/training, especially those readers who are (relative) newcomers to NLP. * * * * * *
(The cover price also includes an audio-cassette of the stories and guided fantasies which appear in the book.  Unfortunately no tape was available as this review was being prepared.)

Note: For some inexplicable reason the major bookshop chains have been slow to feature this book on their databases. If you run into this problem you can contact the publishers direct at:

Saffire Press
34 Park Hall Road
East Finchley
London
England
N2 9PU

An "Honest Abe's NLP Emporium" Book Review - Reproduced with permission.
Written and Produced by Andy Bradbury; author of "Develop Your NLP Skills", "NLP for Business Success", etc.

Tad James and David Shephard are both professional trainers with substantial reputations in the field of NLP.  No surprise, then, to find that this book contains a substantial amount of information on how to put a presentation together and deliver it effectively.  Indeed, I congratulate the authors for including as much material as they have, since there is easily enough material here for other trainers to develop their own courses without needing to consult any other resource.

So what's the problem?
Basically, there are two sections in which the authors blatantly impose their own spiritual/religious beliefs upon the reader.  This is unnecessary to the book, and contrary to the principle of respecting their audience,which the authors purport to honour.
It also does nothing to recommend the book to people - from the business community, for example - who already regard NLP as airy-fairy new age nonsense!  Whilst the reader can safely skirt round this material - see The Trainer State, pages 54-57, and the whole chapter on Energy, pages 95-121 - without missing out on anything of value, the authors might want to consider whether it would be better to re-write these sections in a less partisan fashion for the next edition.

They might also want to clear up one or two little errors that have crept into the text.  For example:

• On page 115 the reader is told "Take off your shoes, so that you have greater contact with the ground."
  The "ground" - in a training or presentation room?  Surely you're most likely to be in contact with 100% industrial strength synthetic fabric?  And in any case, if it's that important, why do all of the accompanying photos of Tad James and David Shephard clearly show them both wearing shoes?
• Quote (page 125): "In the 1950's the psychologist George A. Miller did some research on human information processing." (italics added)
  Actually he didn't "do some research", leastways, not in the sense of conducting any experiments.  The famous, or infamous (?) 7 ± 2 concept was derived from a review of studies carried out by other researchers.
• And how does auditory-digital become a representational system (page 128-129)?
  I'm aware that this is an increasingly common misconception.  Alder and Heather, for example, in NLP in 21 Days, have altered the list of rep systems to: VAKAd (visual, auditory, kinesthetic and audio-digital) - but mere repetition of an error does not turn it into a fact.
  Bandler and Grinder (and Dilts) made it quite clear that the rep systems were the five basic sensory systems.  James and Shephard clearly recognise that Ad is not a sensory system - so why treat it as though it is?

OK - rant over.  To come back to my original assessment, for all it's faults, there is so much good stuff in this book (and I speak as someone who has been doing presentations, training, etc. for a loooong time) that I'm going to give it a good rating anyway.
Strongly recommended   *  *  *  *  *  *