Chase Hughes Audiobooks

The Behavior Ops Manual: a marathon field guide to reading people

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.7/5 average

340 listener ratings

Who is Chase Hughes?

Chase Hughes reaches our catalogue by way of a formidable object: The Behavior Ops Manual, a title that sets its own register before a word is spoken. This is a manual, not a memoir. The promise is procedural, that the way people signal, decide and respond can be observed, named and worked with rather than merely felt.

What that implies for a listener is a particular kind of authorial voice. Writing of this sort tends to be direct, systematic and unsentimental, more interested in what to do on Monday morning than in anecdote for its own sake. The material sits on the practical shelf, close to psychology and communication, and it treats attention itself as a skill that can be trained.

Anyone who prefers non-fiction warm and story led may find the approach brisk. Those who like a framework, and who enjoy returning to a chapter to work through it a second time, will recognise a writer speaking their language.

Chase Hughes in audiobooks

The Behavior Ops Manual is the place to begin, largely because it is the whole proposition in one piece. At close to thirty-nine hours it is an unusually long listen for practical non-fiction, and the length is the point. This is a reference work you live inside rather than finish in a weekend.

Jonam Ross narrates, and the reading carries a heavy technical load with steadiness, which matters enormously across a run this size. It has drawn strong scores from a healthy body of listeners, a rare thing for a book that asks so much of them.

A sensible way in is to treat it as a course rather than a book, one section at a time, returning rather than racing. Explore the audiobook below.