This follow-up to Garr Reynolds' first booklet isn't bad in itself. There is much valuable stuff in there. It just happens that most of it was already present in his first booklet. It is a nice and helpful present to Powerpoint challenged people and is an improvement over the previous booklet.

For owners of his previous book, though, this is a disappointment. More and more of the factors Reynolds treats are problems no longer. Anyone using Apple software will have to put in a lot of effort to even produce terrible slides. Even Powerpoint (out of the box) is getting better to help people create good presentations. Thus, Reynolds' advice on the right use of pictures feels dated and only scratches the surface.

Let me illustrate this with one of the slides he includes: On page 102, he "improves" the bullet-point slide "How will Japanese Airlines (JAL) reduce the workforce by 5000 (people)?" by expanding a small airplane picture to full size and slants the writing a bit to the left. This is just rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. A true reworking of the presentation would rip out the undefined corporate speak ("normal attrition", etc.) and replace them with meaningful, concrete measures the company is going to undertake.

Similarly, he includes a colleague's advice to shoot and create your own images for a presentation, which is fine for a major project - but out of the question for everyone's weekly presentation. Presentation advice book authors need to shift their focus from helping people make their slides prettier to making their content understandable (more Minto, more Tufte!). It is not difficult to create emotional appeal to fight pollution, world hunger or save animals (as do most TED presentations). Adding a nicely designed frog is just the 2010 version of the Powerpoint bean figures. A good advice book should help with boring presentation matter (sales reports, etc.). This is a step backwards. ( )