I really wanted to like this. I mean, there's all kinds of pithy insight that makes you look at the world in a different way, and even though the book didn't go quite where I thought it would, it did explore a lot of dimensions of human society (ps. bring on the data revolution).

What broke down for me is that all those pithy, unique insights don't hold up to a lot of scrutiny. You can't really credit someone for coming up with a brilliant sounding idea if it doesn't survive hypothesis testing from the outset - and I did try to make sure I was limiting myself to examples from before the book was published. And yeah, adding the caveats would make the insights less pithy, but here's the thing: accuracy comes first. If you can't say it both briefly and correctly, it's the brevity that has to go.

I wouldn't say that you should skip this book over, but I certainly recommend reading it with a grain or two of salt.