Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had looked forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, it was nothing like I had hoped. Other reviewers have used a number of unflattering adjectives to describe Gaddis' writing. I would describe it as pedantic and quite poorly written. I could not keep from being amazed by the poor quality of the work given the professor's position at Yale. One reviewer of the book wrote something on the order of this being a Yale course in a book. I think the faculty of Yale should take that as a slap in the face. Gaddis' writing here seems just short of a stream of consciousness; in many instances it nearly takes the form, as there are a number of sentence fragments, especially at the beginning of sections within the chapters. He meanders around a bit through various eras of history driving toward what I hoped would be some sort of meaningful result, something that would redeem the time I spent reading the 313 pages. That result did not come. There is minimal cohesion within the text, save for the strategic difference between foxes and hedgehogs. Were he to have simply sent out a tweet that said, "Plan ahead like hedgehogs. Mind the details like foxes," he would've conveyed a meaningful point, saved us all time and money, and accomplished it in under 140 characters. In the end, the best part of the book was that it ended. The grand strategy for this book is to avoid it.