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The material is interesting. But as a book, it’s either poorly put together, or at best unfinished.

Every chapter includes a link to a video. This makes sense if the book started as a collection of recordings of Anderson’s classroom lectures. And given the subject material, it makes perfect sense to include videos. But it quickly becomes apparent that the videos are the preferred way of teaching the material, and the text is an afterthought:

After each video come review exercises, and only then does the text part of the unit appear. This is a transcript of the video. There has been little or no attempt at adapting the transcript to a text medium, since often the video transcript refers to illustrations that appear in the video, but not in the text version.

This is especially painfully obvious in the last chapter, in which Anderson interviews a Mohawk speaker. The text of that chapter includes every hesitation and repetition, every little tic that peppers speech, but that gets edited out of prose.

If this book is intended as a complement to a syllabus or something, it would have been nice to say so in the preface. Currently, as a textbook, it is lacking.

This is not a book that anyone buys to read for themselves. This is a book that managers buy for employees they don't have any respect for.

The core of the story is a parable with four characters inside a maze: two mice, and two mouse-sized humans. They have a chunk of cheese, which symbolizes the things they want out of life. When the cheese is eaten, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and various characters do or don't do things about it. One of the characters writes on the walls the things we're supposed to learn from all this, like the fact that change happens, and it can be uncomfortable, but sitting around bitching about it won't help.

The whole thing is bracketed by a bit of motivational-speaker fan-fiction, in which a couple of Mary Sues discuss the parable with some imaginary characters and collectively hammer home the lessons we were supposed to learn from the parable.

You can save yourself $20, or whatever the cover price is, by not buying it. And if your boss ever gives you a copy and tells you how wonderful it is, you can show your adaptability and willingness to change by updating your resume and finding a different boss.