The Helen poems Book

I really wanted to like this book, and after receiving the recommendation to read it and looking up the subject matter, I was very enthusiastic to have a go at it. Game theory, strategy and international relations are all extremely interesting to me, so it was massively disappointing when I found it difficult to finish even the first couple of chapters. This may have been due to the format used; I chose it as one of my more recent audiobooks, and other reviewers have stated this is not a good audio "read." However, I believe my difficulty reading it came from a combination of the presentation of the book and the seeming obviousness of its statements.

Regarding the presentation, the book seems to take what are fairly simple ideas and try to present them in a formal academic setting. This results in a simple statement, such as "sometimes its better to have fewer options," turning into page after page of the tiniest variations on multiple examples in an attempt to create an academic framework and common language. The establishment of this unambiguous framework is extremely tiresome and at multiple points my urge was of the, "get on with it!" persuasion.

Second, and without trying to inflate my own esteem, I found that most of the points discussed were quite obvious. As I understand it, this book was quite revolutionary when published, but it is possible that due to MAD and improvements to modern game theory, there just wasn't a whole lot of new stuff for me to digest, at least from the few parts I did read.

The combination of these two points, and perhaps the audiobook issue, prevented me from even being able to finish the book, much less find any enjoyment in it. The book reminds me of old academic papers on now obsolete systems: I wouldn't recommend anyone read it unless doing so is deliberately to provide more context for another endeavor.