The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande
Narrated by John Bedford Lloyd


My boss was kind enough to give this book to everyone in my office so I felt obligated to read it.  The premise is that checklists save lives and can help you live better. There is an extremely positive quote fromMalcolm Gladwellon the cover and I wish I could say that I enjoyed it as much as he claimed to have enjoyed it. 


The Checklist Manifesto’s six hours of run time was hard to get through. The problem was this book felt more like a magazine article that was stretched into a book. As a magazine article, I probably would have taken understood the author’s point and maybe even enjoyed the read. As a book, it seemed like it would never end.


The author is a doctor and gave plenty of good examples of how the premise is useful in his field, but I would have liked to have seen more examples of how it works in other fields and everyday life. My other big gripe was with just how much of the book is describing surgeries in great detail. I did not enjoy that imagery and it just felt like he was padding the book.