Mingling with the Enemy: A Social Survival Guide for Our Divided Era

From the bestselling author of The Art of Mingling, an irreverent and essential how-to for navigating conversational minefields—without getting blown up.

We are living in a new social era: The Powder Keg Era. These days almost every subject leads straight to politics, and the conversation goes straight to hell. In a nation that is completely polarized, with most of us continually pummeled by social media and the 24/7 news cycle, our social lives are taking a hit.

It can happen anywhere: at an office party, birthday bash, wedding reception, the local cafe, the gym, or just while talking with strangers in line for the movies. Suddenly, what began as a perfectly innocent chat about chocolate cake takes a bad turn, and you find yourself in an ugly argument about genetically altered foods. Every day the tensions among us seem to be rising; the ever-widening ideological chasm is hurting our ability to communicate. So, how can we re-learn how to converse with people who are on the "other side"— without anyone getting hurt?

With an insightful, entertaining, and down-to-earth sensibility, bestselling author Jeanne Martinet offers a practical and encouraging guide to navigating conversations in our current social climate. She illustrates easy-to-learn techniques and strategies to help you: keep your mind open, know your own triggers, pick the best topics, change course to avoid disaster, be an active listener, master the ability to yield without losing, employ humor and storytelling to ease tension, go undercover when necessary, be a brilliant subject changer, find common ground, and escape gracefully.

We have to keep talking to each other at all costs. Social interaction is a positive force that we need in order to thrive, individually and as a society, especially in today's fractured world. Learning to mingle with the "enemy" is about figuring out how to have conversations with people that may make us afraid or angry. It's about recognizing the presumptions—even prejudices—we all have when coming into contact with certain people.

With the ultimate goal of teaching us how to connect with each other more fully, Mingling with the Enemy provides a road map for successfully traversing any and all hostile territories, and coming out a winner.