All Books

The “Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception” shares the proven techniques for uncovering a lie. Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, Susan Carnicero and Don Tennant are the authors of this book. This book’s authors have many years of experience interviewing CIA assets, CIA employees, and a variety of ordinary people in non-CIA settings. Their speciality is in determining when someone is lying. And they are good at it. This skill in detecting deception has done a lot of good, helping their clients make better decisions about hiring the right new employee, trusting the right baby sitter, and prosecuting the person who really did it. Detecting deception isn’t magic and it isn’t infallible. But it is possible to become better at it than most of us are now. The book identifies several barriers to accurately detecting deception. We expect most people, to tell the truth, we ask the wrong questions, and we look for the wrong “tells” in other people’s behaviour. And we try to watch everything they do instead of focusing on a small number of reliable indicators. Such reliable indicators of deception include certain kinds of verbal hesitations and evasions as well as specific body movements of which a deceiver is largely unaware. Readers learn to ask questions that require different mental processing from guilty versus innocent suspects. In short, it is one of the best books for understanding human behaviour under different circumstances.

The “Get the Truth: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Persuade Anyone to Tell All” is a good read for the readers of all ages. Philip Houston, Michael Floyd and Susan Carnicero are the authors of this book. It is very well written and an easy read. Many parts read like a spy novel, others like a crime thriller. There is an additional section that provides sometimes humorous, often serious, stories of the use of the methods in the legal and negotiation fields to drive home the real world application of the methods described. The book also provides insight into the way in which we can be influenced, or can influence others, that alone makes this book worth getting. There is a chapter-by-chapter breakdown from a lawyer/interrogator, who also seems to be highly skilled at using the techniques, showing how easily they can be used in negotiation and even in the practice of law which was especially useful to us as practising litigation attorney. The commentaries section also provides insight, in plain English, into some of the psychology research behind why the methods work and how we can influence people and perhaps more importantly, how we can recognize when others are trying to influence or take advantage of us. Combining the world of the spy with everyday life and business makes this one of the most comprehensive, and valuable books in the field.