This book is highly vindicating to anyone who has a breadth of interests and abilities and has been repeatedly told to narrow their focus and specialize. Even with this blog, especially at the beginning, I was told that it should be about only one thing.
Range gives lots of evidence that specialization is limiting yourself after all, and that there are many reasons that specialists fail by being to narrow in their approach. It is hard to integrate ideas if you know only one thing.
I loved all the examples and feel this is important reading for so many of us who were were interested in more than one thing or took circuitous paths. It also would be good reading for parents who too often push their kids in a narrow direction, thinking that is what it takes to succeed.
A couple of my blog posts this fall were directly inspired by this book. See those posts here and here.
I’m glad I read this book and you might be glad too. I give it 4 (leaning toward 5) stars.
