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yesiwanttogrow's review
2.0
The book is good but not quite, I did not like how small the font is! and the lines are very close to each other so it makes me feel uncomfortable.
I honestly did not enjoy reading self-help books because it is so boring, especially when it's about politics and government!
I only liked the idea of making summaries at the end and I liked the cover of it!
I honestly did not enjoy reading self-help books because it is so boring, especially when it's about politics and government!
I only liked the idea of making summaries at the end and I liked the cover of it!
tony's review against another edition
2.0
de Bono has averaged almost a book a year for close to fifty years now. Some of the early ones have held up remarkably well. This one hasn't. He wrote it over a one week period in 1978, and it shows — both as to when it was written, and how.
The first half is largely a recap of his general thinking on thinking — ways we go wrong, ways we can do better, and why it's important that we take steps to do so. Most of it is stuff he's expounded on much better elsewhere, though I was quite taken by an extended summary of the multiple different forces that can cause change, that I haven't seen before.
The second half, however, starts to go quite badly wrong. Here he sketches some ideas he has for making better society, in terms of politics, economics, government, policing, education, etc. It's important to note the context here: this is late 1970s Britain, just before Thatcher comes to power (or as [a:Francis Wheen|29468|Francis Wheen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1275409565p2/29468.jpg] put it: [b:Strange Days Indeed|6820375|Strange Days Indeed The 1970s The Golden Days of Paranoia|Francis Wheen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328757708s/6820375.jpg|7029400]). British society did indeed change dramatically in the decade after this books and the arguments over the extent to which these changes are a good thing or a bad thing still run deep. In some ways this can be read a useful reminder of how bad many things had gotten just before then (which enabled Thatcher to make such sweeping changes); but many of de Bono's "cures" seem laughable — albeit with the gift of lots of hindsight.
Of course he warns in the introduction not to take his ideas too seriously. His goal was to stimulate new thinking, and set people on a path of exploration, not to provide a well-reasoned and -argued set of coherent policies. I have no context now for how successful that goal might have been at the time; but although many of the issues he addresses are still relevant, or are becoming more timely again (in particularly his thoughts around the nature of employment and unemployment; sortition; and the role of technology in society — not to make complexity tolerable, but to make simplicity possible — are all being echoed quite strongly in certain quarters again today), the 1970s setting obscures much of the value, leaving this little more than a curious historical relic.
The first half is largely a recap of his general thinking on thinking — ways we go wrong, ways we can do better, and why it's important that we take steps to do so. Most of it is stuff he's expounded on much better elsewhere, though I was quite taken by an extended summary of the multiple different forces that can cause change, that I haven't seen before.
The second half, however, starts to go quite badly wrong. Here he sketches some ideas he has for making better society, in terms of politics, economics, government, policing, education, etc. It's important to note the context here: this is late 1970s Britain, just before Thatcher comes to power (or as [a:Francis Wheen|29468|Francis Wheen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1275409565p2/29468.jpg] put it: [b:Strange Days Indeed|6820375|Strange Days Indeed The 1970s The Golden Days of Paranoia|Francis Wheen|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328757708s/6820375.jpg|7029400]). British society did indeed change dramatically in the decade after this books and the arguments over the extent to which these changes are a good thing or a bad thing still run deep. In some ways this can be read a useful reminder of how bad many things had gotten just before then (which enabled Thatcher to make such sweeping changes); but many of de Bono's "cures" seem laughable — albeit with the gift of lots of hindsight.
Of course he warns in the introduction not to take his ideas too seriously. His goal was to stimulate new thinking, and set people on a path of exploration, not to provide a well-reasoned and -argued set of coherent policies. I have no context now for how successful that goal might have been at the time; but although many of the issues he addresses are still relevant, or are becoming more timely again (in particularly his thoughts around the nature of employment and unemployment; sortition; and the role of technology in society — not to make complexity tolerable, but to make simplicity possible — are all being echoed quite strongly in certain quarters again today), the 1970s setting obscures much of the value, leaving this little more than a curious historical relic.
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