We have been selling Susan RoAne’s How to Work a Room for a long time now, nearly all the way back to its first edition—published 21 years ago this month. RoAne’s book has obviously not had the historical reach or significance of another anniversary being celebrated today—the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—but it has quietly torn down many smaller, more personal walls of its own over the past two decades, giving people the tools to improve their lives through better communication and social skills at work and beyond.

Ms. RoAne was a schoolteacher in San Francisco in the early ’80s when the economy tanked and the city was forced to lay off 1200 teachers, herself among them (a story many can relate in the current economy). Instead of becoming despondent, however, she decided to help her colleagues with the transition by designing workshops for them, the most popular of which eventually became How to Work a Room. The book has since touched and affected a great many people’s lives all around the globe, and sold over a million copies worldwide. To learn more, head on over to RoAne’s Twenty-one and Timeless page.