Buzan, Tony: The mind map book. London: BBC, 1993.
Content: Mind Maps - what they are, how to use them.
Author’s qualifications: Tony Buzan is the author of a number of very popular books about techniques for improving your memory. He invented Mind Maps™.
Readability: Easy to read.
Accuracy: This book is concerned with explaining the mind map technique, it is not an account of current research, therefore accuracy is not a big issue. The, reasonably basic, information about cognition and neurology is accurate, and the research he quotes is represented fairly and usually referenced.
Currency: Because this is a book about a technique, its currency is not really an issue.
Comprehensiveness: This book aims only at teaching one particular technique, although it does provide enough information about how the brain and memory works to be helpful to a novice.
Amount of background knowledge assumed: None.
Usefulness: This is mainly useful for providing examples of mind maps; earlier books have explained the technique more succinctly. However, because this is a highly visual book, it may be more useful for individuals who learn more easily from pictorial representations.
Memorability: Uses lots of headings, provides previews (which are no more than a list of the headings in the chapter). Lots of pictures, quotes, boxed passages. Too many unnecessary words and irrelevancies detract from its memorability.
Interest: The technique is useful, the photos are intriguing, but this is not a book to curl up with. It's a workbook.
Balance: Not aiming for a balanced account - this is a discussion of a memory strategy from the inventor of that strategy.
Availability: Readily available. Amazon prices the paperback version at US$18.36.
Length: around 320 pages(many of them pictures; widely spaced short paragraphs in large font)
Includes an index and a bibliography.
Comment: This is a 50 page book expanded. There's a lot of unnecessary verbiage, a lot of well-spaced single-word lists. The text could be more focused, with less hyperbole. I think there is a lot of value in the mind mapping technique, but Buzan tries to extend it beyond its parameters.
Overall rating (reflects my own opinion of the book’s worth, not its usefulness to you): **
Now available as a downloadable ebook!
