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kastasi's review against another edition
3.0
Ironically, the author need to subtract to make this book better.
gianouts's review against another edition
2.0
This book could have been significantly shorter to get the simple concept across and still have sufficient examples, which is ironic given the subject. I ended up abandoning it since it just seemed too repetitive to me. 2.5/5 (but I couldn't bring myself to round it up)
yanulya's review against another edition
3.0
The central thesis of this book is really fascinating -- how as humans we so often prioritize solutions to problems that involve adding things, to the point where we almost entirely overlook solutions that involve subtraction. There are some interesting studies and examples backing it up. However the book does fall into to the traps of many books like this: a) meandering off topic, to the point where you occasionally wonder whether a chapter is even connected to the thesis or just happens to contain pet research of a colleague that he wanted to shoehorn in; b) some of the examples are really a stretch; c) it's very repetitive, both with certain examples and with particular points. (E.g. he's so concerned that he'll be misinterpreted as saying that subtraction is always BETTER than addition, rather than his actual point which is that subtraction should at least be considered, that he beats this dead horse until even his original point feels slightly watered down. Which is too bad because it's a point worth making full force). As several others have pointed out, all of these are somewhat ironic given he has a whole chapter on how hard it is to edit & shorten things. All that said, despite those critiques I did think it was well worth the read, and I think (and hope!) it'll actually help expand my own problem solving a bit. I just would've, well, subtracted a little more