I think that every person who has any interest in the Human Brain should read this book. If you are a parent or a teacher interested in how brains grow and develop, or if you simply possess a brain and enough curiosity to wonder just what is in that black bow inside your head! That being said, I was also frustrated with this book for reasons I will come to in a moment.
I was very impressed with the depth of information and subtle concepts about the functioning of our brains that Tokel Klingberg explained in this text. This is not an easy text, simply because these are not easy concepts, but Dr. Klingberg explains both the mechanisms of working memory and our present understanding of its role in attention, learning, problem solving and intelligence. This is very profound and thought provoking stuff, with many implications for anyone with a brain.
I disagree with reviews that consider this to be a college text, it is quite understandable to the lay public, even though it will be slow going at times. Klingberg has avoided the pitfall that most authors fall into when writing about the brain, of going way beyond the scientific data. This is not a mass of unfounded neuro-speculation, a genre popularized with the likes of right-brain left-brain prescriptive.
However, my frustration was that in maintaining academic rigor he sticks a little too close to the already known. I found myself constantly wanting to ask him to speculate a little more. I'm sure that a scientist who has devoted himself to understanding working memory, attention and intelligence at least has a sense of where to go next. He implies that training attention, either through single pointed focus or the juggling of multiple tasks, might improve working memory and intelligence, but he back off from prescriptions. While many authors in this field are willing to write entire speculative bibles, I would have loved to see at least a final speculative chapter. Even one qualified by we can't say this for sure but if I were a betting man I would go with...
Despite this I would say to anyone. Read this book, at least once. Better would be to read it, think about it for a year, and than read again, as I have done.