Assholes: A Field Guide: How to Deal with Difficult People at Home or at Work

We all must deal with life’s slings and arrows—and part of that means dealing with some assholes along the way.

Edwards’s new book, Assholes: A Field Guide, offers suggestions and activities on how to transcend life’s daily obstacles and deal with the assholes in your path. Social interactions can be a deceptively complicated thing, and there is no one magical recipe to make problems go away. Assholes: A Field Guide offers skills and strategies to successfully engage those that make life difficult, while helping the reader understand his/hers responses in those trying exchanges. Edwards outlines how to set helpful boundaries that support the other person while not allowing that person to take advantage of a difficult situation.

The book also is not an “us versus them” approach. Edwards implores you to consider your own actions and think about the ways in which you can work on improving your own behavior. Assholes: A Field Guide is a deft primer on how to navigate tricky social scenarios with empathy, insight, and a minimum of fuss.

Philip Edwards is a Vietnam veteran and urban specialist whose work has brought him everywhere from Chicago to Nairobi, Kenya.

While pastoring urban churches, Edwards led his congregations to reach out to marginalized groups such as sex trade workers, addicts, the homeless, and street gangs. During that time, he counselled families in crisis and taught courses in communication skills and problem solving. Later, he worked as a mediator in the provincial courts of Ontario and as a teacher for the severely emotionally disturbed.

He hopes that readers of his book will learn new skills and strengthen their existing skills in navigating life's daily challenges. Edwards also writes a monthly historical column for his local newspaper. His writings can be accessed at chooserightly.com.