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Reviews (2)
07 Jul, 2017
A "must read" for anyone who thinks we are logical, rational thinkers.
1 of 1 found this helpful So, we're smart right? Rational, logical thinkers? Ummm... No.
We may imagine we are making smart, logical decisions but we're all prone to unconscious biases and distorted, illogical thinking patterns. Result -- we make poor decisions, with sometimes disastrous results.
Thinking is hard work, and our brains are lazy. When presented with difficult questions, we take short cuts, and subconsciously replace difficult questions with easier ones which we prefer to answer. Result: poor decisions, based on the unconsciously-substituted "easier" question we actually answered.
This book is one of those few which will never be obsolete, and will always repay revisiting. For anyone involved in decision making, or HR jobs, or psychology, or curious about how humans goof up so often, this book is fascinating.
It is by no means a quick, or easy, read. The ideas here require time and effort to absorb and internalise. But anything revolutionary is challenging at the beginning.
A lifetime's worth of perception and wise insights is shared here generously, humbly, cogently -- and each chapter ends with some illustrative statements which crystallise the chapter topic in real life scenarios.
A wealth of material copiously illustrated with examples throughout. A book for every thinking person. It could well change the way you think -- for the better. Who knows who else might benefit from that....
I cannot recommend this book too highly..
21 Nov, 2019
The book that should have confirmed Cooper's reputation but was 30 years too late...
So this is a book review, not a comment on the particular copy I bought, or the seller I bought from.
The chief point of interest is that this book would have been published 30 years before it saw the light of day in the 1980s but for a legal suit forbidding publication. Thus it need to be read as a continuation of Cooper's first novel in the trilogy, Scenes from Provincial Life, published to acclaim in the early 1950s. Without this background it can be difficult to understand how and why both the content and style of these novels was remarkable for the time- a time (to modern eyes) of fusty repression between the miscalled 'New Elizabethan' era of the post war 50s and the growing freedoms that exploded in the 60s.
Writers like John Braine have paid tribute to the originality and freshness of Cooper's style and topic matter, which playfully challenges taboos of extra marital affairs and bigamy. Here the tables are turned on the hapless Joe Lunn: in Provincial Life he was content to string girlfriend Myrtle along, refusing to commit to marriage. In Metopolitan Life it is married Myrtle who artfully plays Lunn, ultimately refusing to divorce her husband in order to marry him, as he thinks he wants.
Lunn shares his thoughts on life and love, against a poignantly painted backdrop of a low paid civil servant's existence in London. It's a great pity this book wasn't issued when written in the 1950s: its delay has fractured the reputation of the writer as well as the integrity of the trilogy (the final volume, Scenes from Married Life, needs to be read as the final book despite its being published many years ago). Cooper isn't as well known as he deserves to be, but for anyone with a taste for nostalgia and gentle humour this writer is a hidden gem.