Krishna
This book, of course, is an old one and was very famous even in the seventies, maybe before?
If you are reading for fun, it is still rewarding, though the chapters on how to ‘teach it’ and the instructions to the teachers can be annoying.
The concept is radical and very worthwhile. I will admit that this is my second reading of this book – I had read it all those years ago when I was in the University (not as a curriculum, though).
Interesting analogy on lateral and vertical thinking, the latter being the kind of thinking that almost everyone does in their profession or personal life to solve a problem. Vertical thinking is important and lateral thinking cannot supplement it. However, vertical thinking is like drilling deep in one place in an oilfield, say. If the oil is under there, definitely you will hit paydirt!
Later thinking is trying to do shallow drills in many places in the same field to determine which places are the best for deep drilling. This will uncover many opportunities that will never be met in the ‘choose one place and drill deep’ method. Fascinating!
But pretty much that is the only thing that is fascinating. The writing is elementary, and the prose drags. It seems like a high school text. Yes, it is a novel context but he drills simple facts into us repeatedly for pages and it feels soporific to read it.
However, the examples are brilliant. Right from the first example of arranging some blocks when offered one by one and why most people get it wrong, all the way through, the examples and the explanations around it are definitely worth reading and still astonish after all these years (after publication of this book).
Actually there is not much more to tell! Rereading it after a gap of a couple of decades or more, I remember why I felt irritated. The book is s whole lot of repetition, chapter after chapter, interminably.
Yes the concept is great and the examples are great but when you read the twenty fifth example making the same point as before, you wonder whether there is any point in investing more time into reading this book for such diminishing returns. The repetitions go on and on, and occupy more than half the book.
Skipping major portions of the book will not result in any loss of value in having read this one. A very unfortunate presentation for a stunningly fascinating concept.
Not much more to tell. This will be a short review.
1/10
— Krishna