Don't be mislead by the Amazon description or the synopsis, this is NOT a "book," it is a series of board games with a 72 page highly illustrated booklet about the games. And it takes two to play the games.

This is not a book, but a collection of games to simulate your mind. It did come with a book.

I like the idea of teaching creativity trough games and i believe it is beneficial to the kids ( at least my kids love it).

It has plenty of things to explore and to teach about creativity and other brains' activity.

Have used this pack for many years, in fact, am on my second box. Have used it as a coporate training aid. It's fun, can be applied to any adult learning/education area and if you want to you can have fun with it after the lunch breaks on full or multi day training courses.

Highly recommended

The book is recommended to all researchers and professors who have run out of ideas but need (or just would like) to publish. "Parallel thinking" is a fine example of how to pick up old and well tested ideas and approaches, rename them, add logical paradoxes and clear flaws, introduce provocative terminology (e.g. calling Socrates, Plato and Aristotle "Greek Gang of Three") - and publish that!

"Parallel thinking" as it is explained by de Bono is essentially what now is known as a brainstorming, i.e. technique requiring to put as many ideas as possible about certain issue on the table without any critique or judgment about their validity, applicability, compatibility with common sense (whatever it is) and each other, etc. After that the author makes an amazing statement about seemingly (for him) existence of contradiction between this method and critical reasoning (which is usually a technique applied to the results of the brainstorming and thus does not contradict, but complements it). In addition to author's seeming inability to distinguish between a set of different arguments brought forward to support or refute a certain idea (they can be viewed as being "parallel" in a certain sense) and development of the same single argument (which is essentially a sequential process, ruled usually by the laws of logic), the idea to conduct solution (decision or an action plan) synthesis, called by the author "design", merging all "parallel thoughts", including mutually exclusive and contradictory ones, also definitely deserves reader's critical (not "parallel") thinking.

The book would most surely benefit from author's acquaintance with basic marketing courses about branding (and possibly some other). In this case de Bono could blame for "stereotype thinking" not the educational system, but general home sapiens inability to use innovative approaches in everyday life due to the substantial inefficiency of such approach.

The same could be told about almost all other "major points of Western thinking style" printed in bold letters across the book. They lack some "final analysis touch". Readers, from my point of view, would be much more interested not in statements "that's because educational system/Socrates/sophists/etc. taught us to do - period", but in explanation of why they did so. Those explanations could also help the author to understand a lot of issues, undeservingly called "paradoxes" in the book.

Otherwise I really liked those "bold letters" statements. There's usually one per two pages and reading only them instead of the whole text could save potential reader a lot of time. In addition, the book does contain some good ideas, for example, a note about great emotional satisfaction of critical reasoning: achievement, easiness, contribution, etc. - to which this review is a fine illustration. I really enjoyed writing it.

Unfortunately, these ideas are not author's, but that does not make them any worse - and readers really looking for truly original and profound thoughts about man's thinking process are advised to look elsewhere.

Parallel thinking is a book that offers an alternative to traditional Western ways of thinking. The book stipulates that the basic failing of Western thinking is its emphasis on judgement and placing everything into categories. Parallel thinking is one alternative which focuses on exploring a subject rather than jumping to conclusions. Parallel thinking is not about obtaining a result, rather it is about designing a way forward.

There are many things that I like about this book. Being brought up in the Western education system, I have been locked into the paradigm of critical analysis and the adversarial system. Reading this book, it is apparent that a much more productive approach involves exploring a subject using formal thinking tools. This removes the ego defence whereby I have to defend my point of view against attack.

However, I did find a lot repetition in this book. This is a point that de Bono himself acknowledges in the text. There are also lots of references to his other books which could be seen as plugs. These minor details do not detract from the book at all and I would thoroughly recommend "Parallel Thinking" to any open minded individual who is interested in learning about new ways to think.

It is an odd experience to read a book about being interesting that is neither inspiring nor interesting itself. The text mainly consists of excercises to get the reader used to developing concepts or alternatives around given information, which the author says is the basis of creating interest. Each excercise takes one page, then the author give his answer, which is almost always tedious and dull. Sorry, but I don't feel this book is likley to be avidly read by many people!

Boring, dull, banal...why do people write such dribble, why do publishers publish it. The last few DeBono books have been nothing more than vain exercises in self-gratification. This one may be the worst. You get the feeling the author has a writing quota or something. Pathetic.

There are different sorts of interest.

In this book de Bono tries to get the reader to train his mind to look at things in a fresh and unusual way. This isn't going to please everyone because some people are quite happy with the way they view the world.

Reading this book and doing the exercises has made me a more interesting conversationalist, and of course there is nothing more satisfying than being the most interesting person around a dinner table.

A tedious, bland and pretentious book.

It has the air of being thrown together on a couple of long distance flights. The structure is weak, analysis superficial and exercises peurile - and de Bono knows it.

Although there are a few worthwhile ideas to take away, de Bono over-promises and under-delivers. Predictably he scatters references to his other books and fatuously points to his achievements from the days when he had something original to say.

An exercise in self-aggrandisement and shameless self-enrichment. He would do better to think creatively for a couple of years and distill that wisdom into something useful.

**REVISED**

My family and I found the "Super Mind Pack" a grave disappointment. Visually it is a work of art, but in terms of content it verges on insulting to the average educated adult's intelligence.

The first of Dr. de Bono's 14 supposedly mind-stimulating games is nothing more than a watered-down version of the old children's card game War, in which each player lays down 1 card and the player with the highest card wins. The "Super Mind Pack" provides each player with a special "deck" of 10 numbered cards for this purpose. Dr. de Bono explains that this teaches one the invaluable skill of "anticipating what the other player will do." It is difficult to imagine a reliable strategy for this game, short of acquiring ESP. Games 2 and 3 are actually just slight variations of Game 1. For example, "Game 2" consists of the following basic change: keeping score. Our initial reaction was that perhaps the book was starting out slowly in an attempt to get the reader warmed up. The rest of the "games," however, are regrettably not much better. Far from encouraging "lateral thinking," of which Dr. de Bono is reportedly a pioneer, all 14 of the games are overly simplistic strategy/guessing games. The only thing that distinguishes them from a plethora of other well-known games like chess, Scrabble®, and charades is that they lack the sophistication of those games and are, without exception, indescribably boring.

For a good laugh, try "The Tennis Game" (p.93), that is, if you can decipher the instructions. My family came to the conclusion that the purpose of this game was to (A) develop one's ability to handle mental confusion without going berserk (reading the instructions) and (B) to increase one's tolerance for boredom and pointlessness. An amazing feat in itself, we thought, to take a game so absurdly simple and manage to write instructions for it that would make members of the Mensa Society want to tear their hair out. The game is played on paper and consists primarily in nothing more than rolling a die and (as it turns out, 3 times in 4) immediately giving a point to one of the 2 players. One time in 4, strategy actually enters the game, giving a player all of 2 options: (A) a small chance of scoring (and if not, then a fair chance of "returning the ball") but a greater chance of letting the opponent score, or (B) no chance of scoring but a greater chance of "returning the ball" for more of the same -- as useful and fun as playing chess with 2 pawns on a board with 4 squares. The game continues in this fashion ad infinitum or ad nauseam, whichever comes first. One stands to learn just as much about strategizing in the face of chance by playing Yachtzee® or even craps, either of which are a lot more fun.

Frankly, how a product like this has even managed to stay on the market is a genuine mystery. In fact, conducting a survey among purchasers of the "Super Mind Pack" might be very revealing. Dare we hazard a guess as to what most buyers have done with their copy?

60%: "got the most out of it: kindling and/or mulch"

20%: "a gift 'FROM SANTA' to a disagreeable relative the following Christmas"

15%: "donated it to Goodwill under conditions of anonymity"

5%: "still unopened in our closet"

The book "Thinking for Action," contained in the pack, seems to have been written with junior high or elementary school students as the intended audience and is rife with scintillating observations full of dramatic emphasis (capital letters here correspond to capitals or italics in the original):

• "There is no use PRETENDING that EMOTIONS do not exist."

• "COMPETITION forces business to be more EFFICIENT."

• "We cannot have certain KNOWLEDGE of the FUTURE. So we have to IMAGINE and consider POSSIBILITIES."

We were able to find precious little that would be of even remote value to any educated adult. The back cover of the book states that it is "ideal for use in businesses." It is virtually impossible to imagine any respectable company taking this material seriously. A large part of the meager entertainment we got from the "Super Mind Pack" came from simply imagining the reaction a businessperson would get if they actually presented these materials at an office meeting (especially if they tried any of the "games!")

The book's sole merit is the beautiful and creative photography found between its covers. How unfortunate that the book is marketed not as a photographic collection, but supposedly as a tool for expanding one's thinking powers.