Reviews

The Nature of Generosity by William Kittredge

aguyleroux's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

A moving and thoughtful examination on modern human life. Kittredge throws a cluster of threads at you from stands of his own life remembered, to literary references galore, history, sociology, anthropology…a brilliant and thought provoking read. I want to read it again. 

lucasmiller's review against another edition

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2.0

I thought this was going to be a personal/philosophical reflection on the need for generosity. The intro made me hopeful. Lots of discussion of genetics and the survival instinct, short term and long term feed back looks, and the idea that survival of the fittest might be more altruistic than people tend to think. That's when things veered off my preferred path.

The majority of the book is a memoir/travelogue. The vignettes of the intro really take over the rest of the book. It felt like tow books and I only wanted to be reading one.

I skimmed/skipped quite a bit of this book. Big chunks in the middle chronicling the authors travels in Europe.

Did I waste a day of research reading about 2/3 of this? Yes. Were the first twenty five pages pretty interesting and helpful? Also yes.
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