Ultra-Solutions, Or, How to Fail Most Successfully

Communication maven Watzlawick takes aim at muddled problem-solvers whose strategies only make matters worse. He warns readers to be wary of arguers who assume they know exactly what an adversary is thinking and to steer clear of utopian system-wreckers scornful of the small steps that make change possible. He targets zero-sum playersin the Pentagon and the corporate boardroommistakenly convinced that winning or losing are the only attainable outcomes. Other common pitfalls examined here by the author of The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious are assuming that the opposite of bad must be good and asking rigid questions that demand either a ""yes'' or ``no'' answer. In this brief assemblage of fables and allegories, Watzlawick tends to pontificate, as when he diagnoses the numbing effects of television or the tensions between East and West. Macmillan Book Club selection. (February 29)