Preach!

Just finished the book Th!nk, by Michael R. LeGault. It took me a long time. The book is concerned with the decline of Western country’s critical thinking abilities, why this is, what it means and what to do about it.

I felt that the overall tone of the book was preachy, largely unsubstantiated and overly verbose. Though he does do a great deal of referencing to other works, the parts he chooses to talk about seem only slightly relevant to what he’s talking about.

It’s not all bad. Some of the things he talks about are very thought provoking, even convincing and on quite a few things I agree with him. It’s just how he brings a lot of the arguments and his overarching opinions that often annoy and irritate. It’s funny, on a quite a few basic principles we hold the same views, but he has just decided to draw completely different conclusions from some of them.

I often found, as I read his work, that his convoluted writing style and ‘colourful’ word usage caused me to drift off. I’d be impressed if I even followed a quarter of his arguments at the end of his book, as often found his words just drifting around in my head, without connecting to anything. In fact, the only reason I finished the book at all was because of a sense of duty, not out of a sense of real interest.

Of course, that might be my own shortcoming. Maybe I’m not intelligent enough or not well read enough to follow everything he was talking about. Or maybe he just didn’t write very clearly, despite having written for the Washington Times (where clarity is desired, I expect).

One other thing that really got to me was his strident nationalism. On occasion you could almost hear the Star Spangled Banner playing in the background. I’m not saying you can’t be proud of your country, but have some humility. His constant insistence on the greatness of the US will not win him any friends among non-US citizens. It is, as a matter of fact, one of the things most disliked about Americans abroad. If they would just be a little more humble, then they would be a lot more liked.

All in all, I don’t advise this one. Though it is thought provoking, it is also annoying and difficult to read. Clarity is a prerequisite for any book directed at mainstream audiences and this book obviously wasn’t aimed at academia, with its lack of real facts and statistics and this book just was not clear. All I can hope is that somebody else will come forward and make similar arguments more capably and eloquently, because there is some truth to the things he says; not enough to buy the book, mind you, but some.