Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

perfect for this book. He has great industry knowledge and
made this book happen. I am grateful to know him.
Hollis Heimbouch rocks! I am thrilled that she led the
HarperCollins team and believed enough in this book to buy
it. Thank you, Hollis.
Thank you, Maya Stevenson, for coming onto the Black
Swan team and holding us together. We are going farther
because of you.
Sheila Heen and John Richardson are two amazing
people. They are the ones who really paved the way to show
that these hostage negotiation ideas belong in the business
world. Sheila was my teacher at Harvard Law School. She
inspired me with how she taught and who she is. She asked
me to teach alongside her two years later. John asked me to
teach International Business Negotiation at Harvard
alongside him a year after that. He guided me through that
process, which led to the opportunity to become an adjunct
at Georgetown. When nothing was happening for me, both
John and Sheila were there. Without them I don’t know
where I’d be. Thank you both.
Gary Noesner was my mentor at the FBI. He inspired
and remade the hostage negotiation world (with the help of
his team at the Crisis Negotiation Unit—CNU). He
supported me in whatever I wanted to do. He made me the
FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator. I could call
Gary at five a.m. and tell him I was getting on a plane in
three hours to go to a kidnapping and he would say, “Go.”
His support never wavered. At CNU he pulled together the