Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

I read about this book on one of the book blogs I follow and was immediately interested in it because I resent the pressure that is placed on kids and parents to become hyper-specialized in their sports/hobbies/etc. at such a young age. I want my kids to be generalists and to be well-rounded (that's what my mom always talked about--being well-rounded) and we are never, ever going to invest the time and energy and money required to make our kids world-class athletes in any one sport, so I don't want them to be punished by not making it on a team because they don't practice it all day long. And this book gives some good thoughts about why being a generalist is more important and beneficial than being a specialist. I think the first chapter/the introduction about Tiger Woods vs. Roger Federer was a perfect introduction to this topic, but I think it was probably the most interesting part of the book. The rest of the book kind of felt like a slog. He talks about the important connections that generalists can make in research when they know more about the world than just their one subject, and how generalists are better at using analogies to understand things. I felt like there had to be better stories and more information about why generalizing was better though, and I felt like there had to be better takeaways than what he offered at the end of the book. This was definitely interesting, but it took a lot of energy to read.