Rating: 
Summary: a new outlook
Review: A book and personality test that will change how you see yourself and others, in a positive and astounding way. I have never read or taken a personality test that has pegged me so accurately, nor has explained psychological concepts with such "detailed simplicity"! Kudos to Mr. Keirsey for his amazing temperament sorter which gives great insight into the complex human persona. (By the way, I'm INFJ)
Rating: 
Summary: Far Too General
Review: I read this book concurrently with Type Talk at Work and found this book impractical. The generalizations that Keirsey makes with personality types seem absurd, as if filling pages with a multitude of vocations that might intersect with a given personality trait would be helpful. I was looking for a practical book that I could use to stimulate discussion with my staff at work and this book did not fill that need. I'm not entirely sure what need it does fill.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: If you want an indepth look at the 16 types, this is the book for you. It includes the Keirsey Temperment Sorter, information on each type, how SJ's, NF's, SP's, and NT's tend to act as parents, children, and spouses, a history of the theory, and more.
Rating:
Summary: By the Expert, but Hard to Read
Review: You gotta have it if you want to understand the MBTI, but good luck getting through it! Keirsey gives a disclaimer that is true- he is a bit obtuse. It's good information that needs to get out there, but it'd be nice if it was re-written by someone who knows how to write a page-turner!
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Summary: Please Understand Me II
Review: I find only one thing wrong with this book. In the first section it says you can refer to pages 346-348 for additional information. Hello! My book only goes up to page 343. Is this book a re-hash of the first one with pages omitted?
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Summary: Best Myers Briggs yet - from an ENFJ
Review: In my pursuit of a deeper understanding of Myers-Briggs theory - this is the book that has helped me the most. First, it provides historical perspective. Keirsey ties personality theories of the past to current thinking and theory. Second, he focuses the reader on the four temperments - NF, NT, SJ & SP. This "short cut" allows people to easily see the major groupings of temperment, values and style. It also helps to determine an individual's type quickly without understanding all the details of all 16 types. Some people don't like categorizing people at all. This book does a good job of explaining that the types are just tools to use in a quest for understanding. Well-rounded people will be able to use the strengths of all of the types. There is nothing restrictive about the theory. I highly recommend this book for students of personality theory.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but...
Review: it can be used to stereotype as well as to understand. As an NT, I am particularly irritated by this because I am not happy in the hard sciences, which I tried and found I did not like. According to this theory, I "should" thrive there, but I'm not interested. I'm tired of NT's being described as though we all were engineers, scientists, or "techies." And that's just the example of nonapplication of the theory I'm familiar with from my own life. I found that in this book, lip service is given to individual differences, but actually each type is portrayed in relatively simplistic, cookie-cutter fashion. People are more complicated than this and there are many traits that are not adequately explained by this theory. Compassion is one, and a sense of humor is another. This book is interesting in that it explains quite a bit about people, but it can be abused. I found it did not adequately account for factors such as recall bias, in which people can recollect events from their past very differently depending on how they understand their lives today. The strengths of this approach are that it gives permission for people to differ, and it describes people with enough detail so that readers can see themselves reflected here and get to know themselves well enough to understand why they do what they do. But as with all psychological theories of human behavior, it oversimplifies as much as it illuminates and if any other reader finds, as I have done, that he or she bases behavior on what "should" be done because he "is" a certain type, the theory has been taken too far in my opinion.
Rating: 
Summary: a sociological take
Review: A few reviewers have commented on Keirsey's lack of discussion of type development. I believe the absence of such discussion reflects his background. Jung described type for the benefit of practitioners aiming to better understand how to reach clients. Isabel Myers devised a test she hoped would help match individuals to jobs the way that IQ tests were supposed to predict their academic potential. Keirsey worked primarily in institutions. In my opinion, his phenomenological descriptions of type/temperament are more applicable to managing or deploying groups of people in institutional roles (school, the military, a large company,) than to work on personal growth.
Rating:
Summary: The One To Read First
Review: Keirsey's "Please Understand Me II" is good. But, his first book is a better one to read before this one. And, in my humble opinion, I agree with other readers who say the one to read first in order to understand the philosophical underpinnings of these books is Norman Thomas Remick's easy to understand, "West Point: Character Leadership Education, A Book Developed From The Readings And Writings Of Thomas Jefferson".
Rating:
Summary: Please Understand
Review: David Keirsey's "Please Understand Me II:..." is as good as his other work. Great book! And, to get the maximum benefit out of "Please Understand Me II:..", please understand that you should also read "Please Understand Me I..". And, yes, it helps to understand the philosophy behind "Please Understand Me I" and "Please Mnderstand Me II:.." by reading, as others have recommended, "West Point: Character Leadership Education.." by Remick. Please understand how important it is to understand. And, in fact, if you're a little short this week, you're better off skipping the first two and just buying the latter.
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