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Review: Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing by Jamie Holmes


Review: Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing
Jamie Holmes
Crown Publishers
2015

I’ll admit it now.  I pick this book for its title and especially its subtitle.  For whoever makes the decisions related to titles, you picked a winner.  The author was unknown to me, but from the rear flap should be better known among the millennial generation.  Don’t let that be the deciding factor for this book though.
Holmes has assembled nine chapters plus some extra stuff, and a set of annotated end notes that are worth reading themselves.  Yeah, that’s weird, but I figure if it’s included why not give it a glance.  I’d suggest reading them as you go along through the text.  

Each of the chapters looks at different facets of knowing, and how people come to the point of believing they know what’s going on in a particular situation. The chapters were well written discussions that could be standalone articles.  That’s a good thing and a bad thing.  Good in that they were well done, bad in that, except for a basic overall look at information processing, there was little to keep the reading going.  I found myself repeatedly putting the book down and then having to remember to pick it again. 

I didn’t find much original information or original thought in this book, either.  It’s a combination of psychology, sociology, and several recent business books that dealt with decision making processes.  Nice mix since life, business, or creativity in general isn’t a neat little package of any one of those fields of knowledge.  It is good that the author has found a way to remind his readers of that. 

Would I recommend this book?  Yes, as an airport read perhaps.  

This book was provided by the publishers in exchange for a review.






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