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cstack 's review for:
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
by Donella H. Meadows
The first real introduction to systems thinking I've read, and wow it resonates with me. Instead of looking for the single cause of an event, model the system that led to the event and the types of behaviors the system will exhibit under different conditions. Think in terms of elements and relationships. Think at multiple levels of abstraction. All advice that can be applied to just about anyone's area of focus.
This feels like the kind of book I'll keep around and come back to again and again. Written in 1992 and hardly feels out of date in 2020. The biggest way it dated itself was the belief we would run out of oil rather than switch off of it for other reasons.
The first two chapters mostly feel like a layperson's introduction to differential equations, but stick with it; things get more general.
It's fairly short, well organized, filled with concrete examples, and even gives you an outline of itself in the appendix (I found it useful to read that first).
This feels like the kind of book I'll keep around and come back to again and again. Written in 1992 and hardly feels out of date in 2020. The biggest way it dated itself was the belief we would run out of oil rather than switch off of it for other reasons.
The first two chapters mostly feel like a layperson's introduction to differential equations, but stick with it; things get more general.
It's fairly short, well organized, filled with concrete examples, and even gives you an outline of itself in the appendix (I found it useful to read that first).