Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

I work with data every day so I'm obviously someone who thinks data is fun and spreadsheets are beautiful, so I was intrigued by this book.

The book starts with the statement that data is the most powerful force in the world and I don't feel like it really proves that at all. I do agree that data is everywhere and that it's important, but I think that is way overinflating its importance in the world in a pretty tone deaf way.

The designs in the book are of course beautiful, but I often felt like they were overshadowing the book. Felt like one of those data visualizations that's very pretty, but unnecessarily complicated to read.

Interesting concept. I had great expectations and there were some inspiring moments but the book quickly became repetitive, disconnected, and disproportionately centered on polarized COVID discussions. The graphical representation of the data was the strongest aspect of the book.

This book is a series of interviews with various people about what they think data is and their experiences with it. A wide range of people are interviewed and a very wide range of opinions is covered in this book. It is also part art book with various illustrations and images related to the topic scattered through the book.

I really wanted to like this. The premise sounded interesting and I was looking forward to seeing the different perspectives: I however quickly lost interest in the interviews. They failed to hold my attention for reasons that I’m not entirely sure of. The illustrations/images were quite nice though. They were definitely my favorite part of the book.

I’m not sure if it’s would recommend this considering I didn’t even finish it but I’m sure it had an audience out there somewhere. I’m just clearly not a member of said audience.