Barry Nalebuff

Advantages: Well-explained, easily adaptable ideas, very amusing, authors practice what they preach
Disadvantages: Focuses on business and 'big' ideas

..., but that isn’t the point: the point is that ‘Why Not?’ alters your way of thinking so that you can solve virtually any problem. In fact, some of the examples are deceptively simple, such as the idea of peeling a banana from the bottom up, which is simpler and has other benefits, like reducing the amount of stringy bits. It sounded a bit odd to me at first, but it makes sense when you realise that this is how monkeys peel bananas – if anyone’s an expert at banana peeling, it’s bound to be a monkey, right? The authors, Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres, are professors at the Yale schools of Management and Law respectively. They’ve both written several books prior to this one and have a bunch of boring credentials that are supposed to add to their respectability and qualify them to write this book (yawn). I don’t find any of that stuff important – what... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Made me realise the madness of literary theory
Disadvantages: I'm not sure he realised

...Peter Barry deserves a lot of credit. I was walking along thinking that critical theory is a valid field of enquiry ("it's about how we think about culture, and is of profound importance to just about everything!"). I didn't think much more about it. Until I chanced across Barry's book. The book discusses in each chapter the basic interpretations one can make on literature. He covers a wide variety of topics. Starting with liberal humanism, progressing through postmodernism, feminism, structuralism, postimperialism, Marxism (or historical materialism, as they prefer to call it), all the way up to neo-muffin-eating-ology. For each type of theory, there is a lengthy explanation followed by some examples of how the theory is applied to criticism. Although I'm not sure that barry intended to do so, but my only reaction was one of pure... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: very funny read
Disadvantages: You need to have read the harry potter series to get the full impact

...I myself own a copy of this book and while reading it i enjoyed it immensly. If you have, like me, read the Harry Potter series you will find this book extrodinarily funny as you will be able to see the similaties between the charactors in this book and Harry Potter. In this book it tell the story of how a 22 year old barry trotter is forced to leave Hogwash, with his friends Lon Measly and Ermine Cringer, on a quest to stop Wager Bros. producing a story about his life. However good the pound signs looked in Barrys eyes when he found this fact out, headmaster Bumblemore feared for hogwarts as the Muddles would come in there thousands and tear hogwarts stone from mossy stone. Then go and do the obvious thing... sell the stones on ebay! well i like the author Michael Gerber have to say i am rather cofused about the general story line... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful