We believe this book to be an essential read, and recommend it highly.

The book 'The Sociology of Philosophies' purports to be 'The first comprehensive history of world philosophy,' as well as 'a social history of global intellectual life.' Collins in this book takes as his subject the whole of human intellectual endeavour, exploring the strands and developments of philosophical thought in all the major cultures of the world.

Collins begins this weighty and, at times, hyper-intellectual tome by building a theory of intellectualism, ritual, education, and philosophical reflection. He identifies two of the longest and most dominant philosophical strands as being those arising in Greece and China.

Collins posits the theory that intellectual pursuits do not arise in a vacuum, and are more of a societal and communal development than an individual pursuit or achievement.

'That ideas are not rooted in individuals is hard to accept because it seems to offend against a key epistemological point. Here the question is analytically distinct from the propensity to worship intellectual heroes.'

However, when one looks at the history of ideas, they usually arise in groups. While there are certainly key individuals who arose at different times in history, it is also true that there are patterns -- the age of philosophy in Greece, the Renaissance in Italy, etc. There is a particular atmosphere and sociological aspect to the culture that encourages and develops intellectual development that is unique to each, and leads to differing developments.

After exploring this history and the rituals of intellectuals and intellectualism (which is little acknowledged among scholars in the West), Collins explores who the major individuals are, who the minor individuals are, and what places they occupy in the chain of intellectual history. These chains are most pronounced in developments from Greece and developments from China; the Chinese strands continue through almost all subsequent Eastern thought, which is always responding to or reacting against key ideas formed there; in Western thought, almost all philosophical and intellectual development does the same with regard to the Greek development.

Collins proceeds from this to a theoretical framework (in which he develops more closely the Greek philosophical reflective framework, being the one from which Collins was educated, and thus the dominant underpinning of his writing) that explores the importance and rarity of true creativity. From this, he continues, doing a comparative analysis of intellectual communities, drawing in, in addition to Ancient Greece and Ancient China, India, Japan, Neo-Confucian China, Medieval Christendom, Islamic philosophies, Jewish philosophical development, then surveying modern western philosophies, French, German, and British.

Strong historical themes, political and other intellectual developments (such as the shift from faith-based to experimental-based knowledge and the rise of scientific method and mathematical objectivism) are included in his analysis. Collins concludes this work with Meta-Reflections, in which he explores the sequence and branches in the production of ideas socially (exploring the future of philosophy, which Collins states is 'a partisan theme which announces that the era of foundational questions is over. The call for the end of philosophy is recurrent, a standard ploy in intergenerational rearrangements, usually a prelude to a new round of deep troubles and new creativity.'

Collins' meta-reflections also include an epilogue on sociological realism. The quote that starts this review comes from this section. Self-evident truths are explored here.

'Virtually no one actually doubts the reality of the world of ordinary experience. It is only within specialised intellectual networks that the question has arisen whether this banal reality can be proven to a high standard of argument; and even intellectuals, when they are 'off duty', go back to assuming the reality of the ordinary time-space world.'

Sociological realism accepts the world as it is, which is not always the case with philosophy, even though philosophy purports to explain the world. This is a disconnect that occurs frequently in history. Collins further looks to mathematics and 'rapid-discovery science' for complications and developmental pieces in the intellectual history of the world.

Collins includes an extensive bibliography (worth the value of the book in itself), indexes of persons and of ideas, keys and timelines to figures, and a very interesting appendix entitled 'The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity', in which the ebb and flow of intellectual development on a global scale is examined and shows interesting results. He charts here the 'cultural production' of intellectuals, and their influence on their respective cultures. He traces such developments across hundreds of major and minor figures, determining fewer than 20 'isolates' in any cultural strand, and those being only among the minor figures.

While some outstanding experts on humor, like Freud and Heine, are mentioned in this book, the index does not provide lists for jokes. I tried looking up the key terms in the line, "Science is a sacred cow." The number of entries on Schools, Science, and Secularization only list a few pages, from 609 to 613, on anti-scientific intellectuals. There are no entries for Cow, but it would be between the listings for Courts and courtiers and for Creativity, which includes a bit (see pages 44-46, 52) on a discussion of emotional energy. Comedy would be found between the listings for "Cogito ergo sum" and Conflict as source of intellectual change. Instead of offering comedy as a subject, the index suggests, "See also Opposition, division of attention space by." (p. 1091). That's close enough for me.

In the nicest possible sense, this book isn't exactly what the title claims. All to often discussions of change management tend to concentrate on the people side of things and ignore the less glamerous topics such as re-tooling, revised administrative and reporting procedures and so on.
So, just to keep the record straight, this book is primarily concerned with the personnel aspects of change, with all other aspects of the overall process taking a very secondary part in the proceedings.

And now, on with the review:

One of the ways I judge a book like this is by the number of highlights I've made (makes it so much easier to refer back to the key points).
Sometimes I'll go through an entire book and be lucky to have half a dozen highlighted passage.

NOT here, though.

Without a hint of exaggeration I found numerous points worth highlighting in every one of the eight reprinted articles.

Of course this is not entirely surprising given the list of contributors, which includes such "leaders of the pack" as John Cotter ("Leading Change"), Richard Pascale and Anthony Athos ("The Reinvention Roller Coaster"), and Jerry Porras (Building Your Company's Vision").

I'd also like to commend the article "Managing Change : The Art of Balancing", by Jeanie Daniel Duck, (which ended up with highlighting on nearly every page!).

So, whilst the material is not exactly new (the various items appeared in the Harvard Business Review between 1992 and 1998), I'd suggest this well-chosen set of articles is as important now as when the articles were first published.

There are articles from such leading authorities on change management as John Kotter (Leading Change), Paul Strebel, and more. Each article opens with an executive summary, helping you decide if you want to tackle that article then and there, or move on to another that fits your interests of the moment.

Sooner or later, change is about people altering the status quo, and those in charge often turn a blind eye to the fact that leadership is singularly the most important issue when an organization has to implement major changes. This is followed closely by teamwork, of which there won't be any without leadership.

Inside the covers you'll find the collected knowledge, opinions and counsel of those executives and consultants who have dealt with change at all levels. If your schedule doesn't permit you to leisurely meander through hundreds of pages to find a few workable ideas upon which to build some change solutions, then this collection should be highly recommended for you.

By focusing on the past when Media was not so omnipresent we see that the random and ever changing quality of popular tastes always pertain. Through his re-telling of these 13 now obscure curiosities the author achieves valuable insight into the sometimes ludicrous, often venal whims and fancies that propel some issues and their advocates into the vanguard of the public mind.

The prose occasionally suffers from what I'd call journalism. As I read the first story I wished the author had been able to breathed greater life into the facts presented. In the hands of someone more ambitious some of these tales might stand more clearly as metaphor or epiphany. Of course they might just as easily have lost their focus on the valuable idea that contemporaneous enthusiasms are almost inevitably misguided. And in hindsight most, like the delightful story of Psalmanazar, could not be improved upon.

Don't ignore the further reading supplement. Finding it somewhat dry at first I almost did. It's interest lies in the gathered details presented of how one finds such obscurities.

The title tale is about John Banvard, who in the 1850s 'was the most famous living painter in the world, and possibly the first millionaire artist in history.' Why haven't you heard of him before now? Because time swallowed him up. Banvard sailed down the Mississippi and sketched all he saw on the 3,000 mile voyage. He then painted what he had sketched, producing the biggest picture ever, said to be three miles long. The panorama was rolled up, and he displayed it on stage as it rolled by, while he gave narration and was accompanied by piano waltzes he had commissioned. His performance pieces were slow at first, but became a sensation, as he played Boston, New York, and then London, where he impressed the royal family and Charles Dickens. Banvard spent time in London museums, being taught to read hieroglyphics; he then sailed down the Nile to make another panoramic painting. He was troubled with those sincerest flatterers, imitators; he had made a huge fortune, but his invention was so popular that scores of other panoramas were on tour. He decided to set up, instead, as a museum keeper, his huge display of curios in a massive New York building, described as the best museum in Manhattan. In this, he was in competition against P. T. Barnum, who was by far the most capable promoter, and Banvard returned to the frontier where he was once again a poor and unknown painter. A few panels of his many paintings are all that remain of his work.

Here you will find the astonishing story of Englishman William Henry Ireland, born in 1775, who because his father never thought much of his writing, started forging plays by Shakespeare, and created a literary sensation. We read also the sad story of Delia Bacon, who was one of the first lunatics to write profusely on the theory that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare, but was a front for a collaborative effort by Walter Raleigh, Edmund Spenser, and Francis Bacon. A lighter note is the story of Robert 'Romeo' Coates, whose beyond-hammy acting brought down the house, when his Romeo died not once but three times. There is a chapter on Blondlot's N-rays, probably the most famous incident described in the book, an incident of scientific self-delusion. There is one on John Cleves Symmes, an Ohioan who did everything he could to convince his countrymen about the holes at the poles of the Earth which would lead to its hollow core. There's one on A.J. Pleasanton, who shined blue light on everything imaginable and improved it.

And more. Collins has done an amazing amount of research into long-lost books and pamphlets to bring us these astonishing instructive stories and amazing cautionary tales, the sorts of tales that the proverb 'Truth is stranger than fiction' was coined for. He has wry comments within his storytelling which makes reading his words great fun, and the stories are incomparable. Losers were never so fascinating.

Painful as the 13 (not coincidentally chosen, I'm sure) stories are, they make compulsive reading. My favourites included the one about a visionary man who intended to build a pneumonic public transport system in New York City, and the story of the medical powers of blue light.

There were, of course, some chapters that I didn't find as arresting - not because they weren't well written, but because they weren't on subjects that I am interested in - however, curiously enough, when I gave it to my mother to read, she found the chapters that I didn't like as much the MOST interesting.

This is Paul Collins's first book, and I just hope that it doesn't wind up being his last, because the overriding feeling at the end of book was of wanting more, and what better indicator is there of a good book?