I bought this book because it seemed right up my street. I had previously read, and enjoyed, "Linked" and I run a training course about spotting patterns, so I thought I was in for a treat. There are some good tales in this book - in fact all except one are interesting and relevant and give some insight into the deep structural patterns (everything happens in bursts) in our lives and the advances in technology which mean that one day we may be able to accurately predict the future. But overall I found it a frustrating book to read, and mostly because there is one story, from Hungarian history, which runs right through the book and which is tedious to read (I started skipping the pages about this story) and hardly relevant at all (or, if it is, could have been said in two or three pages instead of taking up about a third or more of the book).
