Efrem, Jr. Zimbalist Books

Teach Your Child How to Think
Most young kids are creative but disorganized thinkers. This book is parents' book to guide the child to think creatively and at the same time be well organized, also as a member of a group of people. The book is good summary of several de Bono's thinking methods and guide how to transfer these skills to other people. De Bono is outside of the envelope, his methods are widely used and work well, but do not form any established academic model. Some people consider de Bono non-scientific, because he mostly refers his own work and not that much other learned papers. In spite of not being a psychologist, I see many connections between his work and cognitive psychology and social dynamics. My opinion is, that this book suits as a summary of de Bono's methods, practical guide for parents informally teaching a small group of children, and maybe as a teachers' book for collaborative work from five year olds up to university level, with additional material to suit the students. Please remember, there is no fast track to creative thinking, it takes time.
(The reviewer holds B.Sc in science and M.Sc in software engineering)

This book should leave the hospital along with your newborn. It is for parents, for children and for anyone who wants to blaze a few more synapses pathways. I strongly recommend this book. A large part of what is going so wrong with our beloved country, lately, is that we have neglected the science of teaching thinking skills. We can get back on track, one child at a time. Get this book today. It will open your mind, create a better future and immerse you in possibilities.

I am thoroughly impressed with Edward De Bono's matter-of-fact, wholly insightful, and unique yet practical work(s) published in the field of Thinking over the last four decades.

After listening to De Bono's taped works (such as "Teach Your Child How to Think"), I was both saddened and amazed to realize how limited in scope were the types and tools of thinking I was taught at all levels of education. The high school I attended focused primarily on acquiring information; the Ivy-league schools I attended taught specialized material primarily through judgment, criticism, analysis, and argument.

Other important thinking modes, especially action-oriented ones such as design, exploration, creativity, and so forth, were assumed to arise mainly from talent and intelligence, and therefore were not taught, even ignored. How wrong and damaging was that default view !

How I also wish I'd learned some of De Bono's concepts, perspectives, and tools in high school (or earlier). Important parts of life would have been much richer, perhaps easier (higher education is one example).

Though I rate these tapes 5-stars, I want to point out that it is likely an adult will have to internalize this material and teach it carefully to a young person. There will be a learning curve in the beginning.

Ed De Bono's works are packed with useful tools and insights. Because they are packed, gaining the most benefit requires reading "between the lines". I believe the listener must "stop the tape" (or put down the book) and make the effort to expand on De Bono's concepts and comments, in part by mapping them into past personal experiences (particularly useful are those experiences that had costly or unpleasant outcomes for the listener because at the time he/she lacked (or misapplied) certain thinking tools).

I am convinced that anyone of average intelligence and education who invests about 20 hours effort to listen to, internalize, and then practice a half-dozen of De Bono's various thinking tools will be amazed at the improvement it will yield in his/her relationships and work. I offer this comment as neither a religious nor "New Age" promoter but merely as a person who continues to benefit from these approaches.

I also highly recommend De Bono's "Teach Yourself to Think" tape set. It largely complements this set.

This is a how-to manual on thinking. The main emphasis is on habits of a good thinker, such as focus and purpose, and specific thinking tools, such as the "Plus, Minus and Interesting" technique. The book enumerates many specific methods of effective thinking and suggests exercises to practice each of them.

First some Critical Thinking (a valid, but inferior activity, according to the author). In spite of the cerebral subject, some statements sound decidedly lowbrow. Intellectualism is put down as an overly complex and non-creative activity. For a purportedly successful methodology that has been around for 20 years (at the time of the book's publishing), the absence of scientific proof that the theory works is surprising: only one study with a concrete result is mentioned. One stumbles over some inconsistencies: on p. 11 critical thinking is said not to have high value in today's society, but on the next page it is claimed to be important. Terms such as "mathematical necessity of creativity" betray the author's careless use of language ("mathematical" is out of place here).

The title is vague. 30 pages into the book one learns that the methods presented are generally applicable to children older than 9. This information should have been present in the cover notes or in the editorial reviews. The boy on the book's cover looks like a 5-year-old. The section on which methods to teach at which age should be in the back, since the special terms and abbreviations, mentioned before they are explained, do not make sense. The cover note claim that the book helps kids "to make today's life-and-death choices" seems rather heavy-handed.

The author does not suffer from modesty: "unlike many people in this field, Dr. de Bono is an original thinker". The book is rather dry, and it is especially unfortunate since the author would like children to be among the readers.

Developing educational tools for thinking echoes works of other writers (Rita Levi Montalcini, a 1986 Nobel winner in medicine, is one). Still, the author does not refer to anybody else's research on the topic, nor is there a list of literature.

The main strengths of the book are its practicality and optimism. The tools are simple to use and the exercises on each technique are engaging. Refreshing is the belief that everybody can be taught to become a thinker.

By far the most interesting and original part of the book is on teaching creativity by means of provocation and Random Word technique. Both tools are designed to bring one to a dramatically new view on the problem and to a solution that may be called "creative". Other techniques, such as "Consider All Factors" or "Outcome and Conclusion", might seem self-evident, but practicing them with children seems a worthwhile exercise.

To summarize, most shortcomings of the book seem overall insignificant, whereas the core is healthy. I would recommend the book to those who are prepared to practice or teach thinking techniques.

I had a quick browse of the book and I find interesting. I believe it would have been better have a title Improve your thinking rather than teach your child how to think. I found the book to be helpfully to any age.
The following captured my interest:
 Difference between, cleverness, wisdom and intelligence
 Perception vs. wisdom and use of logic
 The first rule of Intellectualism If you do not have much to say make it complex as possible.
 Criticism is much easier than creation. It encourages individual creativity even when challenged .

This is a tasty collection of stories and excerpts from Bova's Grand Tour series. You get a little bit of everything including a Sam Gunn story and a snippet of JUPITER, MARS, and VENUS. I think the Grand Tour Series has shown Bova to be a writer who has clearly matured in his later years rather than peaking very early (such as Heinlein and Bradbury). His writing gets better and better. This is an excellent introduction to both Bova's writing and this particular series. I should also say that this "series" is not serial in any manner. You don't need to read one story ahead of another, though many characters overlap. This, of course, is what William Faulkner did throughout his career. Bova is no Faulkner and I'm no Harold Bloom, but this is science fiction at its absolute best.

I want to mention one of the stories in here. It's buried and without fanfare or a clue about what it's really about and it's a gem. 'Fifteen Miles' would represent the Moon part of the 'Tour' and it is a beautiful human story. An astronaut finds himself having to undertake a highly risky mission on the Moon to save a colleague who is stranded - and finds that the man he is trying to save somehow seems to know of the terrifying secret he has hidden in his past. This is not so much science here as a great psychological tale and it will touch the reader in a way the other stories won't.

Awesome sci fi! Hard to put down. I cant wait to check out his other books.

'Tales of the Grand Tour' is a short story collection. The title `The Tales of the Grand Tour' is based on the nickname given to the novels Ben Bova has written in the last 15 years. Sharing the same characters interconnects these novels, and the settings are on planets like Mars, Venus & Saturn.

While most of these stories were written in the past 15 years, there is one gem that was written in the mid-60s. 'Fifteen Miles' is a story is about an Astronaut on the moon risking his life to save a fellow astronaut. What is great about this story is that it's a roadmap showing how Bova's writing has evolved over the years.

My only complaint is that some of these stories are excerpts from his novels. Since I read those novels a third of this material wasn't new to me. Regardless, I enjoyed rereading these sections. If you're a Ben Bova fan this is a must have collection. If you're new to Ben Bova's writing, you might also want to read his Mars novels, as some of the stories in this book are based on those novels. All of these stories can be enjoyed without having read his previous work.

My son lives in Italy and wanted this. Thanks for the speedy delivery of it so I could send it to him.

Great book. I was hooked the first time I read his work. Now I am buying the whole Stone Barrington series!!

Unabridged Audio Book
Reader: Robert Lawrence gets an A+.
This book held my interest from the start. I thought the plot twists were good. I especially liked the mystery of the missing "suicide" victim.. I listened to this book in my car and there were a few "driveway" moments involved in the process. The reader can make or break and audio book and Robert Lawrence was definitely a maker.

I started reading this series with a lot of excitement. I thought that I had found a new series which to sink my teeth into. I have found Mr. Woods' writing to be boring and a bit self serving. I find it bothersome when an author writes almost like it is himself in the book. With the attitude of being better than most. For the same reason I don't like Linda Fairstein or James Patterson. The premise of the books is pretty good but all through reading I just wanted to shout out loud "you are not the cop in the book!". I hate reading a story where I think the author perceives him/herself as the star. I enjoy reading so I would tell you to try it. My personal dislikes may not bother you. I even tried one of the Orchid series and had a hard time with that one as well.

In this Stuart Woods' book, we find Stone Barrington in his first outing. He is a Lt. Detective on limited duty due to a bullet he took to his knee and has decided after an evening out to walk home in order to get some exercise to it when, in a case of being in either the right place at the right time, or wrong place at the wrong time, he witnesses a woman falling from a building. It turns out to be a rather famous TV personality who was scheduled to take her place as a co-anchor on a prestigious network the next night. When he arrives at her apartment he hears someone leaving it rapidly, but when he gives chase his knee gives out and he loses the person he was chasing. However, what is set up to be a relatively open-and-shut homicide case is quickly muddied by the arrival of a freelance journalist who got footage of her at the scene showing that she was still alive when put in the ambulance, by her diary that shows that she was severely depressed at times, and then by her disappearance - no body, no crime. Barrington's obsession with finding out the truth in this case, as opposed to just finding someone to stick with the crime, quickly puts him at odds with the rest of the department (with whom he never fit in all that well to begin with) and he soon finds himself railroaded out on a medical disability retirement. However, he has a background in law and decides to take the bar exam and set himself up that way. The twists just keep on coming as taxi drivers start getting murdered around the city, and Barrington begins to get notes purportedly from the missing star.

I started to read these books out of order when I picked up "Reckless Abandon" and then "Two Dollar Bill," then I decided to hold off until I put my hands on all of them and start at the beginning; I'm glad I have, because I can now look forward to a long line of these most excellent thrillers. Woods knows how to put together a great mystery and keep it exciting!

When does a new millennium begin? What special meaning do we ascribe to "nice round" years with lots of zeros? Why does anyone care? This work by one of our best modern essayists swan dives into the, then, looming calendrical event and comes up smiling. To ice the cake, the illustrations are wonderful reprints of (mostly) medieval art depicting the Last Judgment, the winged devils of Hell, tragically tormented souls being dipped in brimstone and lots of other fun stuff. As his subtitle suggests ("A rationalists guide to a precisely arbitrary countdown"), Gould is after wheat and skips the chaff in this merry intellectual romp through the historical wait for Godot. The author looks at human thinking -- our love of duality (good/bad, before/after) and of numeration (numbering our days and grains of sand, counting stars in the sky and fish in the sea), coupled with the urgent necessities of planting after the flood and launching boats at high tide, to spin a thoroughly engaging disquisition. This little book reminds us that nature doesn't deal in nice round anythings in the matter of solar or lunar cycles, or day length. Hence leap-years, and even leap-seconds, to keep our human-made clocks and calendars in some sort of sync with the seasons. Gould also gently reminds we Gregorian sorts that ours is only one calendar among many -- the Jewish, Islamic and Chinese versions are still lunar instead of solar and bear no direct relation to our tabulation -- and the Mayan method was arguably more accurate. Gould also wanders into glitch-land -- the little mistakes that make us human. For example: long after BC/AD became institutionalized, the discovery that Herod died in 4 BC threw the Biblical tale out of whack until Christianity decided to allow that Jesus was born before that date ... which surely makes the "true" millennial shift 1996 or earlier, depending, naturally enough, upon whether you care that there is no year "0" in our calendar. So the millennium ended either on January 1, 1997 (or earlier) or ended on January 1, 2001... You get the drift. Enjoy!

A joy to read. Gould makes a normally dry and tastless topic, humourous, and enjoyable. I loved the book, and everthing else by Gould I've ever read.

(To quote John Meier) and it is ashame too because this is a wonderful book with lots of interesting bits, sardonic humor and even spelling tips. This book is too much fun to have it drop out of existence because we won't have to worry about the end of time for another thousand years -- or so!

In his lively book Stephen Jay Gould offers a lot of fascinating material as to how the millennium question has been treated with in modern times. But when it comes to the fundamental matter, that is to the establishment of the Chistian numbering of years in the 6th century, Gould commits the all too common mistake to believe he can solve a historical question by common sense. He should have taken his time to look into the sources at hand concerning Dionysius Exiguus and Beda Venerabilis. He would then have detected that the millennium question is of an even more intricate nature than he had imagined, and in particular has something to do with the calculation of the full moon.

Stephen Jay Gould is entertaining. His work Questioning the Millennium is that questioning, but entertaining. I like Gould as an author and his essays are thought provoking.

This work is no different. Complex calendars and the idea of a millennium and how it effects us as a whole. A whole host of ideas brought to us from Gould's questioning mind.

This is a rather short work of essays, but no less provoking. As with all of Gould's essays... either you like them or despise them, idiosyncrasies and all.

Nonetheless this is entertaining.

einstein's essay was a good readbut the rest of the letters didnt really get to me

This is a short collection of various speeches, letters, and other writings on Einstein's thoughts on various subjects. Delves into matters such as his thoughts on war, religion, and a few other subjects. A very quick read and recommended for anyone who enjoys Einstein's brilliant insights into matters beyond Physics.

I had a v.old copy of this book which was falling apart so I replaced it with a less inspired production but still the same inspiring content. I like AE's view of the world, the greater power, truth and beauty -- it is written by a scientist with heart.

The book could have been structured a little better, but noone can argue with the words of Einstein. Several of the quotes in the book are about random and old-time topics that were lost on me, only being 23. However, this is still an amazing glipse into the man that changed the 20th Centery.

Albert Einstein as I see it was one of the greatest humanitarians that ever lived. His brilliance and simplicity of thought shines through on many of his complex theories. You come away saying "Why didn't I think of that? It is so simple!" Einstein's humor is dazzling to match and rounds out my perception of this wonderful unique human being. I enjoyed this book.

I have listened to this collection twice now, both times with pleasure. Hearing the acutal voices of Amelia Earhart, Rev. Martin Luther King, Winston Churchill and Neil Armstrong made a deeper connection than simply reading their words. The collection showcases different subjects and many times contrasts opposing viewpoints of the ideas. This volume is a fantastic introduction to the moving ideals and sometimes sad truths that have influenced Western Civilization.

It is a wonderful idea to make available recordings of great speeches. I hope we have more of this in the future.
In the case of older speeches, the selection is very good, considering the restraints of time, and the readers are uniformly excellent.
As for the modern speeches, it is a marvel of technology that we can hear these speeches as delivered. It is incredible that we can hear the voice of William Jennings Bryan. I can listen to Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" a thousand times and never tire of it! How I wish I could listen to the voice of Patrick Henry! But this selection is too heavily weighted to the modern, and many of those do not deserve billing as the GREATEST speeches of ALL TIME. Also, some of the modern speeches which are included are abridged, e.g. Reagan is cut off in the middle of a sentence, while lengthy and undeserving speeches are played out in their entirety.
Also, with only a few exceptions, the selection is almost entirely American. It is hard to understand why Jimmy Carter's lengthy speech on energy policy is included, while Pericles' funeral oration is not; or why only a small portion of a single Winston Churchill speech is included; why while Bill Clinton's complete 1993 pulpit address, in excess of 20 minutes, is included.
It would be helpful if the complete list of speeches were available to online buyers, as it would be to shoppers in a brick and mortar store.

Well....
Gould's message is pure, and correct. We take complexity as a trend ("thing") that is presumably advancing with time, rather than recognizing it as a part of the Full House where there are right or left limitations, etc etc etc... (you can read the book:)

But from a critique point of view, Gould takes his basic concepts and...sort of...picks complicated forums to explain them, for the average reader.
I mean, I hate to say it, but the book could have been one-quarter to one-third shorter than it was, to say what it does...

I accept his conclusions, and I love his work and his contributions to American science and education. Gould was a great guy and a well-needed popularizer of science. But this book is a bit tedious for the lay-reader who has other things to do every day. Its too long - but for those that can tackle it, its an eye opener !

This book is about how to analyze data. It is the clearest and best written book on the subject I have read so far. Other well known books on the subject include Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Taleb and The Misbehavior of Markets A New Kind of Science by Mandelbrot. Although all these authors are brilliant and their respective books have their merits, Stephen Jay Gould's book is much clearer. While Taleb and Mandelbrot obsess about the flaws of the normal distribution assumption underlying investment theory, they both struggle in offering pragmatic alternatives. Gould instead studies the shape of the entire distribution that he calls the "Full House" and remains comfortable within a traditional statistical framework without building any castle of cards (referring to Mandelbrot fractal geometry).

Gould takes you on a really entertaining quantitative learning expedition by following three separate themes: 1) the disappearance of the 0.400 baseball hitter, 2) his run in with a deadly disease, and 3) the theory of evolution. These themes allow him to flesh out his analytical skills and share with you concepts that are often counterintuitive and occasionally revolutionary.

In his struggle with a deadly disease he illustrates how the median outcome (only 8 months to live) did not worry him much. What mattered to him after studying the related data was the skewness of the distribution with a long right-hand tail (meaning many survivors with normal remaining life span unaffected by the disease). He then studied what were the characteristics of these long term survivors (age, overall health, etc...). He noted he did share these characteristics and sure enough he survived this disease just fine. In his case, the median outcome was irrelevant. It was not his most likely outcome. Within this chapter he also introduces the concept of walls or limits. Many distributions have a left wall as figures can't be negative for many variables including stock prices, income level, and survivors' lifespan. For Gould, `walls' are key because they dictate that the distribution can expand in only the opposite direction.

When he moves on to the disappearance of the 0.400 hitter, Gould shows that the distribution of hitters butts against a right wall (upper limit of human achievement). He observed that the average hitting percentage has not changed much over time. But, the best hitters percentages has declined. Yet, he makes a case that today's hitters are better than the 0.400 hitters of yesteryears. What happened is that all positions improved commensurately (fielders, pitchers). So, the 0.400 stat is not an absolute but a relative measure of when batters outsmarted the other positions. He comes up with this perplexing theorem: "as play improves and bell curves march towards the right wall, variation must shrink at the right tail. The worst players got much better, and so did everybody else. But, the best players margin of relative superiority has consequently shrunk. He measured this phenomena by observing the steady decline of the standard deviation of batting average over the past century. And, indeed it declined steadily. So, in this closed system an improvement in performance was not marked by a rising average, but by a decline in standard deviation. The graphs on page 119 illustrate this complex concept very clearly.

Next, Gould moves on where he left a legacy as a leading evolutionary biologist: the theory evolution. Contrary to what we think the theory of evolution was misnamed. Darwin wanted to use the terms "descent with modification" instead of "evolution." Gould states Darwin referred to "evolution" because he succumbed to the cultural pressure of his era. The latter was obsessed with progress and the superiority of mankind. Gould strongly suggests that Darwin's original phrasing was more accurate. Gould goes on explaining that the animal kingdom history is captured by a right-hand skewed distribution that buts against a left wall of minimal complexity: the bacteria. An animal organism can not be less complex than that. With random mutation managed by natural selection, some species can only become more complex (not less so). Yet, this is not evolution. Bacteria still dominate the animal kingdom. They are more adaptable, more prevalent, more indestructible than any other animal organism. They are the only ones who would survive a nuclear holocaust and who can live in outer space. The process of complexity is somewhat random. Stephen Wolfram had reached the same conclusion in his very strange book, A New Kind of Science where he suggested that evolution was not so evolutionary but random (and replicable through cellular automata processes). Thanks to Gould, I now realize that Darwin and Wolfram pretty much agreed.

In the last chapter, Gould addresses if human culture is butting now against a right-hand wall of human potential. He thinks that is not so much the case in the sciences where he feels we have much more to figure out. But, he feels it is the case in the arts. Will we ever get another Beethoven? Another Shakespeare? Or another Michelangelo? Most probably not. Charles Murray studying the same subject in his excellent Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 reached pretty much the same conclusion.

Does evolution have a tendency to make more and more complex organisms? Most of us would give a confident yes answer to this question; however this book convinces its readers that no such tendency exists. Gould sets out to prove that since evolution works by local adaptation, organisms can evolve to be less or more complex, according to the environment's needs. This is also recognized by Darwin; however Darwin contemplates a drive towards greater complexity which would arise as a result of biotic competition: When one organism evolves to be more complex, the other should be even more complex in order to displace the former. This is famously illustrated in the wedge metaphor in the Origin of Species. The argument of Darwin makes rational sense. What I liked about this book is that Gould does not argue against this notion, but instead makes a number of predictions that would allow him to differentiate between driven (towards more complexity) and passive evolution. Using empirical data, and a number of definitions of complexity (such as size, nervous system, or fractal dimensions of ammonites) he shows that scientific data supports passive evolution.
However, this book is way too long to tell this story. Gould intentionally builds his case very slowly, which by the way makes a very amusing read, maybe except the parts which are almost a eulogy for the bacterial kingdoms. I believe one could easily understand the whole idea of the book by just reading chapter 12 and looking at figure 29. This idea, albeit simple to grasp in hindsight, is not straightforward to imagine (like all real good ideas), and since it gives a way to think of evolution in broader terms.
Idea is as follows:
There is a left wall of complexity for being alive.
Organisms evolve to higher or lower complexity with no inherent bias toward neither. Since there is a left wall, they can't be simpler than a certain level, however the right wall is open, so the highest complexity attained by organisms increases.
The overall shape and mode of complexity distribution doesn't change.

I have been rereading several books in my library on natural selection and came across this one sandwiched between "wonderful Life" and "Eight Little Piggies". The late Stephen Gould was near the top of my "best science writer" list. This was not due to only his literary quality (very high) but to both the always intriguing subject matter and his gentle exposition of natural selection. Unlike some scientists (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) he feels no need to bash, ridicule, insult or fight those who disagree with his view.

His own theories on species creation have been debated extensively but this book is all about contrast. On the one hand he stresses over and over that evolution is without guidance, meaningless to the change that is occurring. The story of the "evolution" of the horse is a good example with the point being that it is a FAILED end-product of evolution. In the huge bush of horse ancestors only one remains. Again, he points out that evolutionary changes were not done for the purpose of a future species. We, as human beings, naturally see current organisms as the final state of a long, continuously evolving pathway. This is absolutely wrong - we are simply at our current state and that's it

A good portion of the book was give over to the question, "Why are there no .400 hitters in baseball?" Paradoxically, he demonstrates that the extinction of this breed is a sign of overall general increase in excellence. This is the paradox - although natural selection is not directed by purpose our own actions are. Of the 50 million species only ours is aware that we are only one of 50 million. ALong the way we get acquainted with a variety of mathematical models, particularly the infamous bell curve that says so much depending on which way it is slanted. Overall - A

Having finished Stephen Gould's book Full House let me opine. An excellent book by all accounts, however, to quibble, he does not convince that there is no innate driving mechanism to greater orders of complexity in the universe. For instance, his argument that if you were to replay the tape of human evolution you would get a different result every time begs the question of yes, but how comes it turned out the way that it did....

In other words, he takes an assumption as fact, that everything happens by accident is evidence for him that everything happens by accident. I guess I don't really understand this....it seems to me hard to explain how sub-atomic particles became you and me. Yes, you can say it was all by accident, but it is just a little more than curious that at every stage of evolution, things took a quantum jump to a higher level of complexity and freedom (which goes with it). I've long since stopped disputing the facts of evolution which at this point are overwhelming, billions of bits of data from every field of science all converge on the same conclusion. However, whether it all just happened to be so for no paricular reason, with no outcome in view can't be proven.....

I occurs to me that we should stop thinking in terms of creation vs. evolution and think in terms of "emergence." You and I are what God is doing right now, what God was doing with dinosaurs is about what God was doing then....Now Gould is taking pains to get humans to stop thinking of themselves as some special example at the top of an apex, or that horses today are necessarily an advance over horses yesterday. As he points out, bacteria is much more successful biologically than humans, they're more numerous, they've been around much longer, they can survive miles underground and in water at temperatures of several hundreds....on and on. "Progress" simply defined, as leading to us because we're so special, doesn't exist.

However, however, however, he overdoes it. Because one can truly have it both ways. We can easily envision another quantum jump from homo sapien sapiens to another level. Yes, we might not be the apex, but that doesn't mean that the general trend of to higher orders of complexity is invalidated. He thinks trends, largely speaking, are greatly exaggerated. We see trends where they don't exist.

He says that the path from bacteria to you and me doesn't represent a "trend" but simply a movement away from a left wall of development. It's a very complex argument, but to use his example, imagine a drunk is walking along a path between a wall and a ditch, which way can he go? Into the ditch everytime. In other words, bacteria represent a left wall, a so simple you can't get lots simpler....the ditch toward complexity is where all the change is going to occur. And he uses many examples from baseball and such to prove his point.

There is, also, he says a right wall....in other words, you can only so far in the rightward direction before you max out. No baseball player CAN throw a ball at 140 miles an hour, world records in sports are becoming less frequent, the faster and faster greats are less and less common, not because they no longer exist, but because they're at the tether ends of the right wall....

But....here is exactly where I find him to be unconvincing. In a universe which went from subatomic particles to you and me, where does he get the confidence to put limits on what baseball players may yet achieve?? Even if it's all by accident, you can't rule out further accidents which may yet produce the baseball player who throws at 140 mph.

Second, he begs the question of why the left wall exists in the first place. You can say the left wall just so happens to be there in the nature of things, it just so happens to be the case that.....you can take things for granted. But that doesn't prove a daggone thing. To be intellectually humble, all you can say is, this is the way it is, if there's a "why" to it we haven't discovered that......

Since I'm going on and on, let me go on even further, many theistic evolutionists have made a human-centered error of defining what God is doing in the universe in terms of "progress." Everything mounts up to a higher and higher level of complexity which becomes defined as progress. That's a political imposition on the idea of evolution, as Gould makes clear, Darwin mostly only said of natural selection that it was a local adaption to environmental pressures. The notion of progress was a Victorian political doctrine based on manifest destiny of white colonialists. In the course of time, these two notions became fused....human-centrically. Social-darwinism being a case pre-eminent...

Progress does not necessarily imply evolution upwards and onwards to greater complexity leading to me and thee, evolution is not necessarily progressive. Granted.

But is it the case that simply because something isn't quantifiable it doesn't exist. Let's use one of Gould's own examples from sports. He says "hot hands" don't exist in sports because all of the statistical research shows that just because a basketball player (he used the example of a baseball player, but I'm switching over) makes a shot, doesn't mean he'll make another shot.

Statistically this doesn't appear. But in reality, anyone who has ever watched basketball knows, players get on a roll....we even have terms to describe it "when you're hot your hot" or "he's in the zone" or "he's unstoppable tonight." Mathematically there's no such thing as "when you're hot your hot" but does that then mean it doesn't exist? Harvard biologist extraordinaire Stephen Gould says yes, humble me, lawn tech extraordinaire says no.

Here's a perfect example of ruling something out simply because it isn't quantifiable. He's a great biologist but a poor psychologist. What is happening when a basketball player has "hot hands?" Statistically, apparently, nothing. Psychologically, the player has lost self-consciousness. A player (and often the audience) who is in the zone, that space where everything starts to click, is lost in the moment. The crowd and the player merge, one seething body making slam dunk after slam dunk.....Sit ringside and get caught up in the moment, it's a thing of beauty....mathematically beauty doesn't appear, but subjectively who can't get lost in wonder when it all starts to come together and the team is on a roll.....looking back you can say that was all just sports talk, but I demure....

There is a bridge between science and God and that is through the psyche, what's happening inside of people that can't be quantified....there is a pattern in the universe which maybe cannot be defined so simply as progress defined as higher orders of complexity leading to me and thee.....but however defined, it seems to me to be beyond the powers of linear thinking to simply rule it out because it can't be quantified....if it doesn't exist in math it doesn't exist at all seems to me to be a poor science indeed.....

As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -JL

I ordered this book with great hopes. The author correctly states that superior thinking skills are the foundation of creating a lasting competitive advantage.

However, within the first few pages Mr. Mitroff uses an example of the Make-a-Wish Foundation's decision to grant a young man's wish to hunt Kodiak bear as an illustration of poor thinking skills in action. That's not the problem.

He then talks about all the flak that the Foundation got from animal-rights groups and other anti-hunting factions. That's not the problem.

Here's the problem:

Implicit in his analysis, is the assumption that this child's wish was immoral or otherwise unethical. The clear message was that, of course, the Make-a-Wish Foundation's decision to grant the wish was wrong and he then tars them with a "dumb-thinking" brush.

The author failed to state HIS underlying assumption that hunting is wrong and immoral, even though the hunt in question was perfectly legal. He then went so far as to suggest that the Foundation could have avoided all the fuss by re-defining the word "Hunt" from "Kill" to "Take a photograph". With a straight face, he suggests that this "compromise" would have satisfied all involved.

Of course this would have violated the entire concept of "make-a-wish-come-true"... the boy didn't wish for a photo safari; he wanted to kill a trophy bear. But this seemed to be small potatoes compared to ruffling someone's anti-hunting feathers.

In the interests of disclosure, I am a sometime hunter and see absolutely nothing wrong with the killing of animals for sport and sustenance, when done within the ethics of the sport. Further, I'm proud of the Foundation for "sticking to their guns" (so to speak).

In my mind, anyone who eats meat and is against hunting is a hypocrite. A cows life is no more or less precious to that cow than the bears life is to it. I've also been a farmer and raised animals for butchering.

To some, my objection may seem tangential to the meat of the book. But this instance of sloppy thinking is exactly what I had hoped to learn how to better avoid.

The two most basic precepts of discourse are to:

1: Define your terms

2: Disclose your underlying assumptions

In my mind, the author did neither and therefore lost all credibility to me.

Some better resources that I can recommend are

The Goal, Eli Goldratt
It's Not Luck, Eli Goldratt
Lateral Thinking, Edward DeBono

The book's impact was made at the end of the first chapter. There I read Critical Questions and tried to answer them. These weren't questions about the material I had just read, but questions about me and my organization and how we deal with problems. Subsequently, the end of each chapter brought more questions to work on.

The book focuses on the problem solving process and the search for the real problem. Many management books solve predefined problems, which are good books, as long as you're sure you've picked the right problem.

The book is a quick read, interspersed with graphics that illustrates the text. Part 3 of the three part book delves into systematic thinking and touches on Jungian analysis, personality types, 5 Ways of Thinking, and even 12-Step programs.

As the saying goes, "Identifying a problem is half way to solving a problem." This book will help you find the right problem.

In this book, Ian Mitroff attacks problem-solving by defining the first step: asking the right questions. He shows you how to use critical thinking skills to find the right problems, frame them correctly and implement appropriate solutions to solve or resolve them.

This book is thoughtful and well-organized, just as you might hope it would be since it teaches critical thinking. It is also well-written and well-illustrated, featuring numerous diagrams that illuminate better ways of thinking. Mitroff includes examples of well-known companies which have made major mistakes that cost millions of dollars because they failed to recognize the right problem in time. He also gives examples of companies that succeeded through improved critical thinking and problem identification. We [...] recommend this interesting book to all business problem-solvers.

Mitroff's book offers a refreshingly fast walkthrough of the complexity of problem-solving. Scorning the usual breathless introductions about how fast things change, Mitroff focuses hard on 5 ways we confound ourselves when trying to address problems with ourselves or with others. I found the first two sections, on how to formulate problems, and how we choose (the wrong) stakeholders highly illuminating. The exercises were significantly difficult and useful, because they required real-life application, they did not simulate it. A limited amount of philosophy on aspects of cognitive science and psychology made the work feel as grounded in academia as it feels in business and professional contexts.

About the first 1/3 of this book is a good, if brief introduction to systems-based problem-solving. The book focuses on taking a broad view of all aspects of the problem, not on a highly-analytical breaking-down of a situation. This is fine, though not earth-shatteringly good or original. Unfortunately, the middle half of the book is an unfocused meandering about the contributions of Hollywood to violence in society, and then to the problems faced in managing nuclear weapons. The last part of the book has a fairly good discussion of the four basic Jungian personality types, and how personality type affects problem-solving. This is pretty good stuff, but it is about the length of a magazine article. Not a worthless book, but not a particularly good value for your money.

Consider "Word Smart II" from Princeton Review or "Verbal Advantage" if you want to learn new words.

It's not for learning new words by listening to the tape. The primary purpose of this tape is not to introduce you to this tape.

The first side of the tape tells the listener how important a good vocabulary is, how the brain continues learning as we age, what this tape is going to do for you, etc. The second side introduces you to about 15 words! That's about 75 cents/word, a very low return on investment with very little meat. A decent tape should cover 100 words.