Drawing on his experience in the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, a leading mediator and his co-author provide the first jargon-free guide to consensual strategies for resolving public disputes-indispensable to citizen activists and to business and government leaders.

"A complement to Getting to Yes . . . shows how parties involved in public disputes over housing projects, public facilities, highways, health, or the environment . . . can use consensus building rather than the courts to reach agreement."

"It is the thesis of this book, which I heartily endorse, that these not-in-my-backyard impasses can often be broken by a process of consensus building through negotiation, assisted by the likes of Larry Susskind. . . . The book that he and Jeffrey Cruikshank have written vibrates and communicates, giving readers a whopping benefit-to-cost ratio."

"An important step forward in the exploration of how supplemental approaches can involve a wider public in the kinds of problem-solving political processes that will produce change in their communities."

"An exciting book to read. It is an encouraging, optimistic, and extremely creative work that focuses on an issue that permeates the lives of any involved in government or anyone who has ever dealt with a governmental system."

Lawrence Susskind, one of the founders and Associate Director of the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School, is also Professor if Urban Studies and Planning at MIT.

Jeffrey Cruikshank is Principal, Winthrop Group, Inc., and former Senior Editor at the Harvard School of Business Administration.