The 12 Best Books on Body Language to Read in 2024

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Our society is more prosperous and richer by the day.

The wealth we are creating (inadvertently) pushes us further and further away from living in small communities, villages where everybody knows everybody else.

When humans were surrounded by 100 to 200 people, you could rely on your subconscious mind to read the body language of others with no need of conscious thoughts.

Today, chances are you don’t even know your neighbors too well (or at all). For that reason, learning and understanding body language, micro-expressions, and facial expressions got to be from pure curiosity, sometimes a necessity.

Reading people’s body language gives you many benefits and advantages:

  • Opens up your mind making you aware of great opportunities or hidden traps;
  • Helps you create a deeper connection with those around you;
  • Increases your chances to influence others and get to a win-win outcome in your interactions;
  • Guides you on how to make yourself better understood and prevents conflict;
  • Improves your presence of mind and awareness about how you feel;
    Gives you a better understanding why people do what they do because you can guess more accurately how they feel and think.

Learning body language, at first can seem a daunting task and hard to achieve.

However, you can become astute quite fast on reading the body language of others (and yours) with the knowledge of the experts in the field.

Here are the best body language books:

The tone of this book is relaxed and friendly.

It’s one of the most comprehensive books on body language. It talks about differences in body language due to culture and location. You’ll be delighted to discover in this book many pictures depicting universal body language signals and many examples of how to apply the knowledge you gain in your day-to-day life or job.

The book is covering a wide range of topics from how to tell if someone is lying to how you should behave in interviews or business situations.

This book is not only informative but also entertaining.

This book is less about reading others, and more about reading your body’s language and understand what your deeper self wants to say.

You are living now in the area of fast-moving, and for that reason many times you might fail to notice cues and messages your body gives you about your health, happiness, and well-being.

Inna Segal offers you in this book a unique step-by-step programme, exercises, and knowledge to assist your body in getting back to health.

This book is not for you if you’re looking strictly to learn body language for other purposes than health. But it’s a good read for anyone who wants to understand themselves better and straighten the connection with one’s self.

Every time you met someone new, your unconscious mind collects a lot of data; based on that data makes you behave in a way or another.

This book helps you read others better and convey your messages to the world with confidence in words and actions.

You’ll know when others want to deceive you or (unknowingly) lie to themselves.

Many times what we say is wishful thinking and not how we feel. This book puts a light on that and teaches you how to become a master at reading others and behave congruently.

Also, you’ll have many examples in this book on how to read others considering the context and their culture.

This book is well researched and action orientated. For example, one of the exercises in the book teaches you how to video record yourself to be more aware of how you talk to others through your body.

You can use and apply this book to so many areas of your life.

Learn from this book body language, (known in social science as non-verbal communication) and achieve more in life.

The book is divided into eight chapters, packed with useful and exciting things and examples about body language.

Discover how your posture, walk, and gestures influence others to like or dislike you regardless of what good of a person you are.

This book can help you:

  • Understand yourself and others better
  • Polish how you present yourself to the world
  • Improve the way you feel and your confidence

This book is an excellent source of inspiration and learning the body language. It presents to you what others tell non-verbally, describing which behaviors indicate positive traits (like confidence and openness) and negative ones (like discomfort and avoidance).

You’ll learn from this book pretty much all you need to know about non-verbal communication useful in all walks of life: from knowing how to present yourself better, to protecting yourself from deception and others lying to you.

After reading this book, you’ll look differently at everyone around you because you’ll know better which people are friendly and which have malicious intentions.

Do you want to know how body language can help or hurt how you lead others and your life? Then, this book is for you.

As you know, body language speaks volumes about you. Learn from this book what you’re telling others through your body and how to send the right messages:

  • How much time you have, or you’re willing to offer to others;
  • Advance in your career;
  • How much space you’re occupying, your appearance and posture make you look confident or the opposite;
  • Polish your personal and business image;
    Your gestures, vocal tone, touch, facial expression and eye contact make others feel comfortable around you.. or the opposite;
  • Deal with authority figures.

This book is enjoyable to read, entertaining and enlightening. It’s packed with insights into different perspectives and useful advice for many situations.

The authors of this book have a lot of experience in deciphering body language. They’ve been interviewing CIA assets, CIA employees, and many ordinary people.

This book provides you the telltale signs of deception, how to make a difference between personal tics and twitches and signs of lying (because a closed posture not always means that you are lied to, but maybe the person in front of you is scared or cold).

The information provided in this book has a lot of applications in the real world, and you can be assured the info is tested considering that the authors developed and used it in the CIA.

In this book, Paul Ekman gives you information and insights on how your emotions determine your actions and what is your body saying to others.

This book is a different perspective on body language seen from the emotions point of view:

  • Understand the emotions people feel by reading their faces;
  • Spot when people lie to you but going a bit further and finding out why they are doing it – (not every lie, is intended to hurt you; it’s not about you);
  • How to control your own emotions and reactions;
  • Becoming more aware (before you speak or act) of how can happen to you to behave irrational or over emotional;
  • Choosing better ways to behave when you feel emotional;
    Being a bit more sensitive to how others might feel;
  • How to use ethically the information you have about how those around you are feeling.

This book is for you if you’re searching to understand body language and use it to make your life and the lives of those around you significantly better.

This book is for you if you’re interested in:

  • How to be more present in a conversation,
  • Capture the attention of those around you,
  • Deliver clear and assertive messages without saying a word.

The book could easily be regarded as an advanced course on body language.

You’ll learn from it:

  • How to read people before they speak and have the advantage of being able to respond in a sensitive and considerate way;
  • The value of listening first, talking later;
  • Hidden signs others give about their intentions;
  • How to deal with decision makers; but also with your loved ones on sensitive issues.

Each chapter provides you information on different communication methods for all sorts of situations.

Discover in Tonya’s book how to:

  • Make a good impression
  • Establish rapport easily and fast
  • Communicate better with others
  • Detect if people are lying to you
  • Improve your relationships
  • Deal with people in general 

The book is filled with stories, examples, and many techniques you can use so that people respond to you more positively.

As a downside of this book, don’t expect too many illustrations which can be useful in reading body language. However, the book explains very well facial expressions, gestures, and body postures which compensate for the limited number of pictures.

If you’re not yet familiar with the psychology of body language, you can start by reading this international bestseller.

The authors show us how we can utilize our knowledge of the brain’s functions to understand people’s emotions, behaviors, and true intentions.

They’ve also used real-life examples and offer several exercises that you can try to practice reading human emotions and human behaviors. This great book can help you analyze the nonverbal cues of other people and perhaps overcome communication barriers.

Our bodies speak louder than our words.

The authors did a great job of discussing body language and micro-expressions, and how it subconsciously acts a role in love and dating, sales and negotiations, and in our everyday communication.

They have found that the use of body language and the capability to decipher it significantly contributes to our success.

What makes this book stand out from other body language books is that it tells you all the necessary information and explains how to apply it to your daily life by using real-life scenarios.

If you want to be more persuasive, gain more confidence, develop your social skills, be better in future job interviews, or be an overall great communicator, this is a must-read.

5 more great books on body language:

  1. The Secrets of Body Language: An Illustrated Guide to Knowing What People Are Really Thinking and Feeling by Philippe Turchet
  2. Louder Than Words: Take Your Career from Average to Exceptional with the Hidden Power of Nonverbal Intelligence by Joe Navarro
  3. Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage by Paul Ekman
  4. Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer
  5. Body Language for Dummies by Elizabeth Kuhnke

5 great books on social interaction:

  1. How to Talk to Anyone by Leil Lowndes
  2. The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism by Olivia Fox Cabane
  3. Conversationally Speaking: Tested New Ways to Increase Your Personal and Social Effectiveness by Alan Garner
  4. Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion by Marshall Rosenberg
  5. Improve Your Social Skills by Daniel Wendler

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