VardanMathur
I probably picked this up at the wrong time. The book is deep into theory of chaos and complexity... But I was reading this in parallel with another book about physics. Probably because of the timing, I found this to be hard to consume and difficult to remain engaged with. Felt very much like reading a recommended book for a grade/credit at university.
Dear author - It's not you, it's me :)
My most frustrating experience of reading a book is when I need to spend time reading words, lines, paragraphs, pages without any meaningful progress in the content. This book could have been a tenth of what it is, if the authors didn't spend so much space in just citing examples, with little relevance to the subject. The core ideas are tucked at the end of each chapter, and that's easily evidenced by much lesser number of examples that they expect the reader to go through.
Overall, one could just read those chapter summaries and be done with the book. However, some of them didn't even seem relevant to this topic of uncertainty - which is why this goes to the bottom rung in my ratings.
Merged review:
My most frustrating experience of reading a book is when I need to spend time reading words, lines, paragraphs, pages without any meaningful progress in the content. This book could have been a tenth of what it is, if the authors didn't spend so much space in just citing examples, with little relevance to the subject. The core ideas are tucked at the end of each chapter, and that's easily evidenced by much lesser number of examples that they expect the reader to go through.
Overall, one could just read those chapter summaries and be done with the book. However, some of them didn't even seem relevant to this topic of uncertainty - which is why this goes to the bottom rung in my ratings.
Very succinctly organized chapters, each containing gems of advice, but with additional layers of practicality. For example, everyone knows that “Doing things for the long run” is good advice. But a layer on top of it is - will your spouse, boss, friends, clients, investors understand and support you when you take decisions for the long run? Reading through this book, it felt like Morgan Housel was able to know what it takes to implement the advice and then try to solve challenges that come when implementing them in life.
While the book covers a vast array of historic human follies, the reading experience was a drag. Written quite a few years ago, the writing style is also hard to stay connected with. Too many pages with too little to say. Ended up flipping pages to browse through major content, but not what I like to do with most books.
This book has been most insightful, for me it was the second most influential book after Covey's Seven habits. It is about understanding how people get us to say “Yes” when we should have said “No”.
Not just about marketing/advertising, this is a book for everyone. Because we all face situations when we are influenced by other people (or need to influence other people). And this book helps us become more rational when making decisions, avoiding those pitfalls of influence.
