Short Books That Will Make You Better at Conversation

Five Ancient Lessons for Better Conversations at Work

The best stories do not tell you what to think. They teach you how to. In five Japanese tales that have shaped how people understand conflict, ambition, trust and success for centuries, James Allen finds quiet lessons for modern working life. Each story is followed by a short commentary: The Empty Boat on how we misread intentions; The Stonecutter on why influence outlasts status; The Dream of the Million Ryō on the gap between plans and reality; The Cat's Gratitude on the long returns of kindness; and The Crab and the Monkey on patience, and on protecting what you have built. A collection to sharpen thinking, warm a conversation, and leave you with something worth saying at the next one.

Time-Tested Proverbs to Equip Time-Pressed Professionals

What if your grandmother gave sounder career advice than most business gurus? Long before TED Talks, MBAs and the language of productivity, people distilled life's hardest lessons into short sayings — and the sayings survived because they held. Still Right takes a handful of familiar proverbs and shows why modern psychology, behavioural economics and neuroscience keep confirming them. Each chapter pairs the history behind a saying with a story, a finding from research, and a practical way to put it to use. Why an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Why pride still comes before a fall. Why slow and steady so often beats fast and frantic. Ideas to sit with — and to carry into the day.

How to Talk, Disagree and Get Along in a Divided Age

Twitter says Britain is furious, divided and falling apart. Your morning commute suggests otherwise. Every day, strangers make room for buggies, hold doors, offer seats and make tea for colleagues they disagree with about politics — and nobody posts about it. Britain Is Better Than Twitter is a funny, thoughtful and quietly hopeful exploration of why real life is usually kinder than social media makes it appear, and how we can recover the lost art of talking to people with whom we do not entirely agree. Drawing on Joseph Addison and The Spectator — the eighteenth-century publication that turned London's coffee houses into places of curiosity, humour and civilised conversation — James Allen asks what those spaces can teach us about modern offices, divided politics and life online. Warm, witty and designed for busy readers, it offers a more human way to navigate work, conversation and disagreement in a divided age. Hold the door. Ask the question. Make the tea. Britain is better than Twitter — and so are most of the people you meet.