William Ury - Helping People Get to Yes

This book offers tested guidelines for designing a dispute resolution system to handle conflicts effectively on an ongoing basis--and avoid the damaging costs of attorneys' fees, lost production, and emotional injury. They explain how to diagnose and correct problems in an existing system as well as create and implement a new system where one does not exist.

Getting Disputes Resolved examines the key questions to be answered when analyzing a dispute resolution system and presents six basic principles of dispute system design -- such as designing procedures that encourage disputants to return to negotiation and arranging procedure in a sequence from least costly to most costly.

"As president, I dealt with many disputes, from coal miner strikes to Arab/Israeli conflicts. Getting Disputes Resolved provides the kind of ideas that would have been useful to me in the White House. It would be equally helpful to anyone who has to manage an organization where differences among people must be resolved."

-- President Jimmy Carter

"We can no longer afford to spend billions of dollars on costly strikes and lawsuits. There is a better way and this book shows how. It presents a concise method for resolving the many disputes that grow out of all relationships."

-- William P. Hobgood, United States Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations 1979-1981

"The authors combine a deep commitment to the civilized resolution of conflict with an unequaled understanding of the steps to that end. "

-- John Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics Emeritus, Harvard University

In this landmark book, William Ury, best-selling author and director of the Project on Preventing War at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and a stellar panel of experts from several scientific disciplines debunk the commonly held notion that violence is a predictable part of the human condition and outline an innovative paradigm for preventing violent confrontations.Must We Fight?presents compelling new research and insights into human nature which clearly demonstrate that humankind is not doomed to continue the seemingly endless cycle of violent conflict. With intelligence and sensitivity, Ury describes a brilliant program for personal and community empowerment called The Third Side. As he explains, in most conflicts between two parties there is actually a third entity-the community in which the combatants, and their dispute, are embedded. The Third Side is a proven model for ending conflict that shows how to mobilize communities to stop and, in some cases, prevent individual and group violence.

A practical resource for helping to resolve real-life conflicts, Must We Fight? Includes a simulation of an actual racial incident at a public high school. Readers are challenged to put themselves in the place of an administrator dealing with this incident and are presented with a series of questions and Third Side activities that can help them find a resolution to this complex community confict.

Beyond the Hotline lays out a comprehensive crisis control system designed to prevent unintended war. Almost all the attention until now has gone to weapons. Crisis control focuses on the neglected human factor. It reminds us that just as critical as reducing the weapons is reducing the risk of war.

"Beyond the Hotline is for everyone who has ever worried about the nuclear threat and asked: "What can be done? What can I do?" Here at last are some practical and politically feasible steps you can actively support.. "Even the most optimistic arms negotiator agrees that, for decades ahead, we will be living in a world with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, a few hundred of which could destroy us. Therefore, improving crisis management is an absolutely essential step towards reducing the risk of nuclear war. More than any other book I know of, Dr. Ury's book points out how that can be done."

-- Robert McNamara

"Read this book; it's pure gold!"

- Freeman Dyson, author of Weapons and Hope

"William Ury addresses the threat of nuclear confrontation and disaster and the means for reducing that threat in terms that are at once urgent, effective, and practical. This book is to be read not merely as one that is intelligent and instructive, but as a lucid statement of what needs to be and must be done."

- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Must reading for anyone concerned with reducing the risk of nuclear war, whether or not the current arms control negotiations succeed.  Serious consideration must be given to the kinds of practical crisis control measures outlined by Professor Ury."

- Senator Sam Nunn

"This book is a succinct guide to urgently needed steps to pull the two superpowers back from the brink of a nuclear holocaust. This useful book shows what can be done quickly to reduce the risk of nuclear war."

- Randall Forsberg

Ever since the advent of the Cold War, the specter of a nuclear holocaust has cast its grim shadow over world events. Thoughtful people all over the globe have long feared that the delicate balancing act necessary to keep the superpowers at arm's length was a trifle too delicate to last. Could an accident or minor miscalculation start a war that neither side wanted?

In 1983, a joint US-Soviet study group was formed to undertake a broad-gauged, interdisciplinary project on avoiding nuclear war. The US and Soviet teams chaired by Graham Allison and Georgy Arbatov, hoped that by drafting clearly outlined procedures and protocols to be followed in times of crisis and by defining the mechanisms by which their leaders could avert nuclear war.

The result is Windows of Opportunity--a document of extraordinary depth and candor. In this unprecedented volume, Soviet and American minds join forces to explore the foundations of 'peaceful competition' and to build on an understanding of past events to ask where we should go from here.

The chapters in this book document an evolution in thinking and practice about nuclear weapons, nuclear accidents, arms control, European security, and competition in the Third World. These eminent scholars hold out the possibility that the superpowers might, through mutual respect and open communication, achieve, if not perfect harmony, at least a level of peaceful competition in which or ideological differences are subordinated by our overriding common interest in peace.

"This book comes at exactly the right time. Everyone concerned about the future of US-Soviet relations should read this book."

-- Yevgeny Velikhov, Vice President, Soviet Academy of Sciences