Adjusting to a new culture and getting along with the local people are two common challenges for nearly everyone who lives and works abroad. Whether in business, diplomacy, education, or as a long-term visitor abroad, anyone can be blindsided by a lack of international knowledge and experience and be caught at a disadvantage. In this second edition of his best-selling The Art of Crossing Cultures, Craig Storti gives voice to the cross-cultural experience and shows what it takes to encounter a new culture and succeed.

This timely new edition focuses special attention on how to deal with country and culture shock and includes many new examples of cross-cultural misunderstandings—particularly in business. Storti identifies two types of intercultural incidents rather than just one, giving a more wholistic picture of cross-cultural misunderstandings; that is, such misunderstandings are two-way streets. Type I incidents are those experienced when people from other cultures behave in ways that frustrate you. Type II incidents are those in which the local people are annoyed by your behavior. The model of cultural adjustment has been refined to include both types.

Also new is a discussion of the foreign (expatriate) community˜ the positive and negative aspects of becoming part of that group. Storti bases his analysis on both theory and the writings of some of the world’s greatest travelers and adventurers including, Paul Bowles, Noel Coward, E. M. Forster, Graham Greene, Aldous Huxley, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Rudyard Kipling, Mary Renault, Paul Scott, Mark Twain, and Horace Walpole. New to this edition are more quotes from intercultural specialists such as Edward Hall, Edward Stewart and Milton Bennett, John Mole, Joyce Sautters Osland, and Neal Grove.

Weaving their comments and insights into his discussion, Storti maintains that encountering differences in other cultures requires a readiness to go through a clearly identifiable mental process. This process begins by assuming that other people in other cultures are like oneself. When they aren’t, a negative response is triggered which often leads to withdrawal.