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You’ll smile when you read the opening paragraphs of The Logic of Failure by
Dietrich Dörner (Metropolitan Books, $25, ISBN 0 8050 4160 5). These
introduce the disastrous consequences, like congestion and pollution, of
impeding traffic by speed bumps to improve the environment. Read on and the
smile fades. Dörner maintains that we fail because we apply simple
solutions to complex systems. He says that we should assess the whole rather
than the parts and suggests ways of doing that. Plenty of humour and fascinating
anecdotes in a serious yet enjoyable book.