From the course guide. Few personal and professional skills are as important as negotiation, and fewer still are as seemingly challenging. Most of us feel uneasy about negotiating, yet we know it's crucial. We negotiate whenever we buy a car, work out the terms of a new job, plan a wedding, or resolve a complex business conflict. But that's just the tip of the iceberg; we negotiate continually with family members, friends, colleagues, neighbors, business associates, even our children, and usually we feel hard-pressed to do it well. Further, much of our world is shaped by negotiation, as we realize when we read about talks among politicians, business leaders, or diplomats or hear about a treaty, a Senate bill, a sports deal, a hostage or crisis, a merger, or a peace accord. Yet often we feel confused and stressed about negotiating, believing that negotiators are born, not made. In this course, we will see that negotiation is definitely a skill that can be learned, and we'll build on your lifelong experience in doing it. We'll develop a host of principles, skills, techniques, tools, and ideas that can dramatically improve your ability to negotiate, however you feel about the process right now. We won't look only at effective ideas; we'll also strongly consider ways to cope with the many emotional aspects of negotiation that often so daunting. And far from fostering a selfish, short-sighted, and calculating approach, we'll instead develop your ability to negotiate with integrity in principled, trustworthy ways. [...] Throughout this course, you'll acquire the ability to go far beyond simply doing well in one-time, arm's length transactions. The course will challenge you to aspire to a greater visio of what you can achieve with excellent negotiating skills. In fact, having the ability to negotiate well can help you create more justice and prosperity for yourself and others. It can also help you become a better colleague and consumer, leader and family member, citizen and student of history -- even, at times, a peacemaker (pages 1-2).