This book was a demanding read, but highly worthwhile. The theory that Suchman lays out in the opening chapters is useful and excellently presented; the empirical section was fascinating and helped me to concretely apply some of the design principles that I had gleaned from [b:The Design of Everyday Things|840|The Design of Everyday Things|Donald A. Norman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1283507332s/840.jpg|18518]. The intersection of very different disciplines featured here was challenging and productive. And in terms of structure, I wish that all second editions were like this: the introduction and footnotes that clarify ambiguities or express changes in the author's views, the original book still present in recognizable form, the following chapters that bring the book up to date.

As a few other reviewers have pointed out, the real gem here is the original book, which I think is greatly improved by the introduction and notes. One gets the impression that between its publication and the creation of the additional chapters, Suchman forgot how to write. (Or perhaps more fairly, she became accustomed to writing for academic specialists rather than professional generalists.) I don't have much of a background in science and technology studies, so the later chapters seemed to bring up some interesting ideas but were frequently incomprehensible to me. In addition to being thick with jargon, they seemed rather unfocused: they mostly consisted of literature reviews, with some informal observations thrown in that failed to substitute for structured research. It was nice to see Suchman's ideas applied to more contemporary developments, but I don't think readers would suffer a huge loss in sticking to the original edition of the book. ( )