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Unthinking. By Harry Beckwith (2011)

by Harry Beckwith(Favorite Author)

3.45 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0446574279 (ISBN13: 9780446574273)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Business Plus

review 1: I won this in a First Reads giveaway.None of the information in this book was shocking or even surprising. If you know a little bit about psychology or sociology (or marketing) you're already familiar with these ideas. It does put them in quite a current context, which is nice, with the recent publishing date, and frequently cites examples and information from 2009 and 2010.But the way in which this book was written was rather ironic: of all the anecdotes and statistics about unthinking masses and criticisms of human behaviour, the information was presented in a rather ADD manner. Meaning that it's all very swallowable and understandable. Very surface of things. Which the book points out time and time again is what people like. I prefer my information a little bit more tho... moreught out and not so easily digestible. All in all though, you'll like it if you hate the s**t that's sold to you every day, whether you like it or not, or if you know it's never an accident that you buy, like, or eat the things you do. Most of the book made me shudder, as it describes what I hate about current culture, and I guess humans in general, including myself at times (I'm guilty of this unthinking behaviour too, as much as I'd like to say I'm not). I suppose I would rather read a book about THINKING, and how to stay out of all the materialistic marketing ploys as much as possible.
review 2: Beckwith has offered us here a very accessible investigation into the cyclical exchanges that form the relationship between the consumer zeitgeist and the almost astoundingly complex world of marketing successes and failures. His best gestures are those that gently guide into understanding those justifiably perplexing examples that seem to defy all of our intuitions. While the structuring of the book at times struck me as a bit scattershot and jumpy, this allowed for a certain fluidity that I appreciated in the way it worked to highlight the interweaving that underlies so much of the commercial world as it attempts to mime the movements of the Buyer. I did occasionally feel that Beckwith had left a lot on the workshop floor however, and my gut response is that while the book isn't slim as it stands, another 40 or 50 pages of deeper exploration on some of these topics were not only probably available but would have done some appreciable work towards a culminated effect that reached further than, "Well, that's all very interesting." I suspect this might be reflected in the book apparently being framed less as an intellectual endeavor on the matters at hand than a 'How-To' for young marketers looking to get a larger grasp of the market's often schizophrenic-seeming personality. This hardly means it is without insight, but does mean that at least this reader felt Beckwith had shortchanged not only the consumers of the book but his own investigations. less

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