Book Review: You’re Not Listening by Kate Murphy

I am SO the target audience for this book… I’m a perennial interrupter. I’ve long explained it away as evidence that I’m so interested in the teller’s tale that I can’t help but show that interest with my own thoughts, stories, and interjections. If you’re even a little bit sensitive to the power of listening and any psychology AT ALL you’ll recognize the incredible arrogance of my explanation – an arrogance that I understand now and that I’m working on. And that understanding owes no small measur to Murphy’s fantastic book.

This is a marvelous focus-shifting book. Through anecdotes, social and psychological theory, and science, Murphy explains the importance of listening to us as individuals and to society as a whole. It’s written in an engaging style that held my attention even when it was highlighting my listening failures. I learned a lot, and was entertained in the process. To my mind, you can’t ask for a better assessment of non-fiction than that!