Thank you to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This book touched on the concept that we are not able to judge as well as we think we can. I thought this was well written, but I felt there was more to be said beyond the superficial judgements we make. It makes a lot of good points though, we judge messages based not on the message itself as often as the messenger. If you feel a connection or trust towards a person or pathway for delivery you are more likely to blindly follow without knowing truth. It can be so difficult to break down messages and find the unbiased fact. This book is a good star though.

Well organized and insightful, this book is deftly packaged focusing on who we listen to, who we don’t and why. In an ever-increasingly over-crowded shrill world where competing interests and their backers are jockeying for our attention and vote - whether it’s on a product, service, or person - who carries “the message” is key. What drives us to suspend rational thinking and facts and be swayed by those influencers/messengers deployed to coax us into believing that which may or may not be true. It’s the messenger, stupid! Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks walk us through the many ways in which we are influenced by messengers - based on a multitude of factors.With specific examples and data points, the authors break down for us how we are susceptible to the messages conveyed by artful messengers regardless of what’s fact or fiction. No matter how discerner we are, we are all influenced by warmth and charisma, trustworthiness and vulnerability. We are impressed by competence and socio-economic position, swayed by attractiveness. This is an interesting and well written book, reinforcing what we may already know and shedding new light on what we may not with cited research. Messengers matter, messengers are key, beware of messengers! :-) A recommended read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I am an avid reader of nonfiction, but I just could not finish reading this book. I got through the first chapter and then had to stop. The content of the stories were interesting enough, but the presentation was not compelling at all. Coupled with some formatting issues, I was not able to finish this read.

I am a new reader of non-fiction. I have always struggled with a short attention span, and so mostly gravitate towards narrative non-fiction. I thought the content of this book sounded very interesting, but unfortunately I couldn't get into it.

Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, and Why, is an insightful, engrossing and educative book. In the 21st century we find ourselves impacted more and more by influencers. We look to individuals we perceive as prominent and dynamic and take our social, professional, political and consumer cues from them. But how exactly does an individual gain the power to have influence over us, even when perhaps they should not? Why do some people with expertise, knowledge and good intentions get largely ignored despite their competence and proficiency? The logic and salience of the message, it turns out, is not nearly as important as the messenger. The messenger becomes inexorably linked to the message. Because the messenger conveys social context that the message does not, the messenger effectively overshadows the message itself. On both macro and micro levels, messages get lost or inflated by the very messengers that carry them. Martin and Marks examine eight crucial traits that shape effective messengers and largely determine the communicative hierarchy. Five stars.