Magic of Conflict

Crum's optimistic how-to stresses that conflicts are not games, which have winning or losing as their outcome; a conflict is a dance of energy, and if you embrace it in order to work through it, learning and growth occur naturally. Cofounder of the Windstar Foundation with singer John Denver (who wrote the book's foreword and supplied its photographs), Crum has adapted the Japanese martial art of aikido to what he calls the Aiki Approach to conflict resolution. Mental exercises for centering, photos of aikido postures and graphs of mindsets accompany this self-help manual. Examples of conflict-solving by business people, artists, politicians and others illustrate key points. Crum's New Age jargon is annoying (""Accept your correctedness''; ``choose to cocreate''). His method seems to consist of equal parts positive thinking and Oriental wisdom, with aikido as the guiding metaphor. Prentice Hall Book Club alternate. (September 22)