A few days ago I finished the latest Nancy Duarte book, Persuasive Presentations, published by Harvard Business Review.  See my earlier post, Presentations… Inspired, for some additional background on this.

Photo courtesy of Alex Rister who also wrote about this book.

Persuasive Presentations was a very fast paced read.  I love the format of this book.  It was composed of a number of mini chapters, each only two to three pages long.  Nancy is no hypocrite – she practices what she preaches.  While a book is no presentation, many of the concepts regarding habits of adult learners, attention spans, etc., still apply.  Therefore, she chopped her content up into small manageable bites.  No long drawn out chapters here.  No complicated explanations.  It was all very straight forward.To help drive home the point, she makes external references, provides graphics and illustrations, and cross references within the book.  She covers everything from the needs assessment (audience and topic), to development, design, format and medium, reading the audience, presenting via video, incorporating social media, and follow-up.  This is a great book for the new presenter or trainer, or the seasoned professional.  I can even see it as reading for an undergraduate level course on communications and presentations.  Nancy covers all the relevant topics including contemporary subject matter.  A great read – highly recommended.  Thanks Nancy!