Reading Marshall Rosenberg's newly released book, Speak Peace in a World of Conflict helped me to deepen my understanding of the "heart of mediation" and inspired hope that positive social change was achievable. Rosenberg reveals an abundance of practical strategies that can transform your conflict resolution practice against a background of profound insight into his theory of human conflict and violence.

Marshall Rosenberg has tirelessly traveled the globe mediating disputes and training practitioners in Nonviolent Communication for more than forty years. In this new work, he offers an overview of the "mechanics" of the NVC process interwoven with a tapestry of tales illustrating the "consciousness" of NVC and its real world application. Rosenberg also adds theory concerning the roots of violence, the role of language, "domination systems" and "enemy images", while offering unique strategies for dispute resolution used by everyone from Israeli kindergartners to African tribal chieftains.

Three themes delineate the book's structure. The first section of the book covers the "Mechanics of Speaking Peace", including an overview of the Nonviolent Communication process developed by Rosenberg. Featured throughout this section are exercises that invite the reader to have a direct experience of the potential of the process to deepen self-awareness and open to new possibilities for how we interact with one another.

In Part 2, Rosenberg focuses on "Applying Nonviolent Communication". First, he shows how the NVC process can be utilized for working on oneself to deepen a connection to "divine energy", a phrase Rosenberg uses to describe the "spiritual basis" of NVC. He defines this divine energy as "our natural life-serving energy", and asserts, "this divine energy is manifest in the joy we feel in giving to one another."

Rosenberg continues, "Unfortunately, many of us are blocked from that divine
energy by the way we've been taught to think". He offers Nonviolent Communication as a process for connecting with this divine energy, first in oneself, and then within the context of interpersonal relationships and social change. He covers the practice of empathy, a skillful process required to sustain connection in a mediation context. Rosenberg also explains the roots of violence contained in the language we have all been educated to speak.

Finally, in "Speaking Peace for Social Change", he focuses on effective strategies for facilitating social change. Including examples from the fields of education and intertribal conflict, he highlights our habitual tendency to manufacture "enemy images" which limit our capacity to be effective agents of social change. He shows how the NVC process can be used to dismantle these enemy images and build a bridge of connection, human to human. He also gives explicit ideas for how to use the NVC process in mediating disputes at all levels of human interaction, including a powerful and unique strategy to employ when one or more disputants resist coming to mediation.

Rosenberg offers practices for dealing with the burnout and despair common for
agents of social change, including the power of gratitude for building internal resources to sustain one's efforts in a world filled with pain and suffering.

Although some of the material in Speak Peace will be familiar to readers of Rosenberg's previous books, this book contains a depth and breadth not available there. Rosenberg conveys his material in a light-hearted yet deeply touching manner. Reading the book, I both laughed out loud and was moved to tears.

This book will be valuable to both new and veteran practitioners because it offers a rare insight and clarity into the nature of human conflict and its resolution, while offering specific exercises and practices designed to immediately implement the theory and make it practical.

I am usually critiquing, but on this book, I only have positive feelings.

Speak Peace... has helped me to get in touch with my inner softer caring self & really understand who others are and how they feel. I have dozens of other books (Tolle, Thich Nhat Hanh, etc) which are excellent, and Speak Peace surpasses them, for me. I had been dealing with a lot of pain and other's anger, so maybe this book was simply especially aligned with what I was seeking, but it is excellent in itself.

It is written in a very flowing manner; it is not a technical manual, and it's not an instruction book. It's very easy to read, with the concepts expressed well and in small bites, but without losing any meaning. The care of the author flows through the way he writes, and that makes it also easy and comforting to read... it's like listening to someone speak who is very calm and caring.

The book is realistic. The ideas are not suggesting to pretend things are rosy, or to manipulate others, or to reward them or use use hidden techniques to affect them. It focuses on an approach of simple understanding, and wanting to understand more.
If you were to tell another person what ideas you were applying, they would not feel manipulated.. the idea is mostly that you care and want to understand.
The ideas are not forced either. Once I read them, I was more-so remembering things I already knew, but had forgot. Applying them is just natural, there's no forcing it.

The book is suitible for picking up for a few minutes, or for reading all the way through. You can read a single page and get entire ideas in their completeness.

The first day I read a few pages, I transformed a difficult relationship with a family member. And the next day with an even more difficult family member. The book helped me release so much anger, blaming, sarcasm, etc that I had slowly built up inside me, and I can see clearly that they were based on mis-understanding.. not truly understanding the other person.. and choosing to judge them as not being worth effort.

I honestly would recommend this book, before any other book on dealing with conflict or anger/blaming/judging. The only exception would be hurt feelings related to someone you cannot speak with, like people you see on TV and such. For that I might suggest Thich Nhat Hanh and other authors.

If you are struggling with conflicts, or anger blaming or judging, then this book may be what you are needing.

..my greatest thanks to all the people who helped this book be published...