Excellent book for any businessperson who makes presentations. ( )

This was a good, solid, straightforward discussion about improving presentations. The author generally adopts the "less is more" aesthetic, and he provides plenty of useful, visual examples to support his claims.

There were a number of useful recommendations in the book. For instance, he suggests using a detailed, written document to support the live presentation. That way, the audience will have access to all of the details, and can focus on what you're saying. I also liked his push to "go analog" before you "go digital". That is, work offline (on paper, whiteboard, post-its, etc.) with the ideas and core message for your talk before you start putting bullet points on slide templates in PowerPoint. In fact, he eschews bullet points altogether, and I think he's won me over.

If anything was lacking, it was helpful responses for managing your bosses, peers, or possibly audience members who are expecting (or even demanding) "Death by PowerPoint" - that is, dense slides with many bullet points and lots of data per slide. In the book, the author notes that highly visual slides are the exception, and their very nature can be perceived as simplistic or "not doing your homework". The goal is to do the hard thinking in preparation to make the slides clear, coherent, and easy-to-understand. That is a very worthwhile goal.

The book has inspired me to really work on developing my presentations and presentation skills. ( )

This book provides good information for people who have been doing the "traditional" business presentation. Nothing earth-shattering, but many things that have probably been forgotten. ( )

Inspirational. This book is filled with examples & inspiration. I'm not sure how well Garr's appraoch to presentations would be received at my company, but I'm going to try. ( )

Excellent Book! This book changed the way I think about presenting. I used just two of the suggestions in this book in a presentation and people are still talking about how great the presentation was. I borrowed this from the library bit I'm seriously considering asking for it for Christmas. It book makes a great reference guide and is really worth having on hand when you're working on presentations. ( )

http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_averag... ( )

Excellent quality book ( )

Garr Reynolds has turned the lessons of his wonderful blog presentation zen into a brochure-like book with good presentation design tips. A good, concise book for the Powerpoint-challenged who do not want or lack the time to distill the essence of Tufte's works. Reynolds's book is much better than Cliff Atkinson's Beyond Bullet Points. I only wish someone would tackle the real topics of presentations. With a little effort, it is easy to make a case against global warming, world hunger and obesity. It is much harder to do an engaging presentation about the next steps of a SAP project or a monthly sales report. It is thus no wonder that Reynolds does not quote neither Minto nor Zelazny who are helpful in those aspects.

Tracing ideas not to the current management bestsellers but back to their origins might reduce my impression of Mr Reynolds as an airport bookstore reader. Combining the works cited into a bibliography and a little bit less backscratching would have been helpful. At times, the repeat appearance of a select few becomes almost comic: The sect of Powerpoint addicts or the buddies of Garr Reynolds. Recommended. ( )