Never Be Lied to Again - book review

The title of David J. Lieberman's "Never Be Lied to Again : How to Get the Truth in 5 Minutes or Less in Any Conversation or Situation" strikes a sympathetic chord with each of us. After all, who hasn't been in the situation where someone is telling us a bald-faced lie but because we don't know that or have no way of verifying it, we have to accept their word and then suffer the consequences. Now, most of us aren't private investigators or detectives that have to get the truth out of people as part of our jobs. But we spend a surprising amount of time acting on information from friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. on the assumption that they're telling us the truth. As a supervisor I once had an employee who had the uncanny ability to lie through her teeth about the need for time off but each time I checked up on her, she had an air-tight alibi.

In the first part of the book Lieberman describes the physiology (physical signs) of someone who is lying which leads to the second and third sections where he gives us the recipes for detecting lies and for hanging in there until you get the truth. He doesn't claim any of the methods are fool proof and there are people so skilled at lying that none of them might work. But having an arsenal like Lieberman provides raises your odds significantly against those who aren't so skilled.