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Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas) (Paperback)

by Julian Baggini (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
RRP: £10.99
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Complaint: From Minor Moans to Principled Protests (Big Ideas) + The Duck That Won the Lottery: and 99 Other Bad Arguments + Bad Science
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Product details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Profile Books (5 Jun 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1846680573
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846680571
  • Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.4 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 115,411 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

A"He talks great sense on the positive effects of our modern grievance culture, and has a good line in aphorisms.A" - The Times


Book Description

‘This book could change the way we live … [a] relaxed, affable, yet startlingly lucid analysis of humanity’s tendency to complain’ - The Independent
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Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and thought provoking, 10 Sep 2008
How ironic would be to complain about a book entitled 'Complaint'? Let's not go there, there's no need to. As someone who loves to complain, moan and rant, I found this book both funny and reflective. I've read a few Baggini books now. I like his style. He's detailed in his presentation of arguments but not overly dry and cumbersome like so many other philosophers both past and present.

Baggini examines and discusses the various different types of complaints. Their uses, their consequences, their purposes, their benefits. He captures things we all know about but expresses them in a way that very few of us could. A sign of a good thinker. A sign of a good writer.

Although there's no outstanding Eureka moment in this book, it's a very solid framework for thought and discussion. His opinions on the habbits of men and women are interesting and his idea that complaining being a human universal that if used correctly is something which has practical benefits. This can take many shapes; the complaint can be the starting moment of a process which will produce required change or it just be a form of human catharsis. Either way, it's worth remembering complaining is an interesting characteristic which reflects who we are and how we feel about ourselves and think about what's around us.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars I'm not one to grumble, but ..., 23 Jul 2008
By O. Buxton "Olly Buxton" (Highgate, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
The concept is fine: a Malcolm Gladwell-style pop-science look at the psychology and social history of complaint would have made for a fascinating little book.

But Julian Baggini's short entry - very short: it is done and dusted in 130 pages - is neither focussed or organised enough to pull that off. It reads more like a loosely-themed ramble through a field of the author's favourite hobby horses.

Baggini describes himself as a "philosopher" - every man's right, I suppose - but it does imply some sort of tenured academic role, whereas the most I can extract from a quick Google is that he has a PhD in philosophy and has fashioned for himself a role as a public commentator of sorts on matters ethical and metaphysical. However good his philosophical credentials, they don't qualify him especially well to write a pop-science book on complaint: you'd think a psychologist, psychiatrist or sociologist might be better equipped for that.

Nor, having read his offering, does he appear to have much of substance to say. In 130 parsimoniously entexted pages he manages to distract himself from the subject at hand on a number of occasions, wandering off piste into tangential ruminations on what appear (from his other writings) to be pet subjects - particularly religion and atheism. Elsewhere he doesn't really fashion much of an argument: there's a cursory attempt to categorise types of complaint and a half-hearted reader survey from which Baggini draws half-hearted conclusions, but he doesn't really have anything to say other than "complaint has its place, and isn't all bad".

Some respectable commentators have found value in his book, however: Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times, for whom I have a great deal of respect, raved about it (and on that recommendation I bought it), so perhaps it just caught me on a bad day.

But all the same, I can't see this one tipping The Tipping Point out of the bestseller list anytime soon.

Olly Buxton
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