A Repeat and Tackle on Previous Work Good volume for those who may want an slightly deeper insight into visual communication. For the most part the analysis is well crafted, with stimulating insights. Sometimes a bit too repetitive, and obsessed with its own neurosis. For instance in the struggle against Power Point presentations, while I agree with him on most of the analysis, like Tufte also points out quickly early on it is not about PowerPoint but about the use given to it and the paradigm associated. He could be much clearer since I believe that the most important points are not about the software. Also I disagree with his interpretation of intellectual ownership, I also think that rights should not be given exclusively away but do advocate for a public, open, and shared cultural production. But that is another conversation...
All in all, it is a recommendable book, which - even if a little bit too hyped up for what it is supposed to offer - still offers a valuable read.
Disappointing Like many of the other reviewers, I too am a fan of Tufte. This book, however, is not up to the normal standards that his other books are. The chapter on the evils of PowerPoint was very amusing and insightful, but you can purchase that separately from Amazon.com at The Cognitive Style of Power Point.
Weak If you are looking for guidance on metrics presentation or insight, pass right by this book. The pictures are nice enough I suppose; but there are many, many, and I mean many, other books, Tufte's included, that are significantly more worthwhile.
The least of the Four Books This book does not hold up in comparison to the first 3 from Tuft. This appears to be made up of a number of unconnected papers. The most important in my opinion is the introduction of sparklines. It's worthwhile to revisit Minard, The inclusion of the work on Powerpoint is OK, but the inclusion of Tufte artworks/sculptures seemed a little self serving and left me confused as to the point. The production qualities of the book are superb, but the content inconsistent
Flawed I am a big fan of Edward Tufte and his previous books. So I was excited when I was given this new book last year. Unfortunately it took a full year to work through it since it's full of bad writing, redundant graphics, boring topics, and pet jargon.
The text is just very dense, filled with lists of terms when the author wants to be sure he covers the bases: "The analysis of cause and effect, initially bivariate, quickly becomes multivariate through such necessary elaborations as the conditions under which the causal relation holds, interaction effects, multiple causes, multiple effects, causal sequences, source of bias, spurious correlation, sources of measurement error, competing variables, and whether the alleged cause is merely a proxy or a marker variable."
He also falls in love with his own jargon: depedestalization, PP, Phluff, pitch culture, economisting. The book has a few typos, which suggests that he couldn't get an editor to stomach proofreading the whole thing.
Much of the material in this book was already presented in sections of his other books and pamphlets: Minards map of the French invasion of Russia, chartjunk, loss of shuttles due to Powerpoint bullets, sparklines, cognitive styles of Powerpoint.
One really annoying habit is that when a graphic is discussed on more than one page, it is reprinted on each of those pages. The Minard map appears six times, at different scales and positions! At other times the graphics are plopped across the crease between pages.
If you've never read Tufte's other books you might learn something from this one, but most of it is presented better elsewhere.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Not Available Comics
Trevor
