It’s hard to write about numbers: most researchers chose their fields because they were better at manipulating data than writing beautiful prose. Plus, it’s really easy to get sucked into a project and forget that the rest of the world doesn’t share your level of background knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm. Dr Koomey does a good job of identifying common pitfalls and clearly explaining ways to avoid them. Examples make this book useful and anecdotes keep it from getting too dry.

A lot of the content in this book seems obvious: “question authority,” “synthesis follows analysis,” “dig into the numbers,” etc. But just because you already know these lessons doesn’t mean you’re successfully implementing them in your writing. Groundbreaking ideas aren’t what makes this book a useful tool. The clear strategies, complete with easy-to-emulate examples, are.

This was probably written for a more academic audience, but it’s quite readable and anyone who has given a powerpoint presentation should read it. Business plans, newspaper articles, board meetings, scholarly research, and political debates would be a lot more enlightening if they followed just half of the tips in this book. ( )

Useful but sometimes textbooklike. ( )