Reviews for Philosophy, Who Needs It

The average rating for Philosophy, Who Needs It based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-18 00:00:00 Richard Converse I read this book having recently studied Madhyamika and wanting to learn more about process philosophy in general, so I thought this would be a good place to start. This is very clearly and straightforwardly written book that sets out outlining both philosophies then describing how they might be compared and integrated. However, it's far from an introductory work - loads of it went way over my head, especially the logic and analytic philosophy. You will definitely need a stable background in philosophy to understand ever bit, and whilst the author is generous with details and analysis, prior knowledge is certainly assumed. I can't say that I know more about process philosophy after reading this, unfortunately. I know that it thinks all things are processes, and that God is a kind of process too (I think?). The book has given me good direction for what to read next in this field and not much more grounding within it. The most useful and interesting part is seeing the parallels between Christianity and Buddhism, and for a first time reader of inter-religious dialogue, this was very rewarding. The survey of different schools of Buddhism is also very handy. I've given three stars due to my experience, but I think it probably would be much more useful to those with a thorough background in both philosophies this book involves.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-11 00:00:00 C Huhn I really enjoyed this book. It was a slower read, but very informative and helped me think about another aspect of leadership, teaching. I don't follow football, so I didn't know anything about Bill Walsh before I read this book. I picked it up because I read an article on the Harvard Business Review blog talking about his leadership style and it mentioned this book. I wanted to get a "non-corporate" perspective on leadership and coaching. There were a couple things that really stood out to me in the book. - A big part of leadership is teaching. He spent a huge a amount of time teaching everyone what he wanted done. I think (and he admits at the end of the book) that he didn't delegate enough. However, he reinforced for me that a good leader is always teaching. - His level of concern for the details was tremendous. He talks about paying close attention to the right details (and not the wrong ones). This is something that also seemed true to me from the Alan Mullay book (American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company) and the David Marquette book(Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders). All three of them dove very deep into the details as part of the turn around effort.