PENGUIN The Meritocracy Trap

The thesis of this book is good and he probably could have condensed it into a book a quarter of the size. It is extremely repetitive in places. The author seems to constantly use complicated language where simpler language would suffice and the sentences are really very long. At times it's just a long list of complicated statistics that are hard to follow, e.g. "the difference between the median income of the top quintile of wealth distribution and the bottom two quintiles of wealth distribution quadrupled in the years 1950-1985 while the difference between the median income of the second quintile and the second to bottom quintiles stayed the same." This is a fictional example but really he rattles on for pages and pages with sentences like that. It could do with a lot more plots ideally on the pages where they are referenced rather than at the back of the book.

Challenging idea would have been more effectively delivered in 25% of the words

The product was excellent

Absolutely ideal reading for the Covid 19 lock-down.

The cover of the book is damage and dirty.