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Rating: 
Summary: 4 stars for readability, 2 stars for presentation
Review: Almost anyone will sound brilliant if first they set up a hopelessly lame excuse for the status quo (what Lakoff calls the "Traditionalist View"), then knock it down with vigor. In every case, Lakoff's examples can be readily explained using the traditionalist view by simply adding finer and finer categories and allowing them to overlap. Still, the book does trigger thought on the issues.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars for readability, 2 stars for presentation
Review: Almost anyone will sound brilliant if first they set up a hopelessly lame excuse for the status quo (what Lakoff calls the "Traditionalist View"), then knock it down with vigor. In every case, Lakoff's examples can be readily explained using the traditionalist view by simply adding finer and finer categories and allowing them to overlap. Still, the book does trigger thought on the issues.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightning reading
Review: Definitively in my top 5 (High Fidelity?) books to bring on a desert island. Lakoff manage to be brilliant and sometimes funny while debunking one of the oldest theory in the world (the Aristotelician view on the nature of categories). Who said formal logic, linguistic and cognitive psychology are boring?
Rating:
Summary: Enlightning reading
Review: Definitively in my top 5 (High Fidelity?) books to bring on a desert island. Lakoff manage to be brilliant and sometimes funny while debunking one of the oldest theory in the world (the Aristotelician view on the nature of categories). Who said formal logic, linguistic and cognitive psychology are boring?
Rating: 
Summary: An anti-objectivist screed
Review: George Lakoff, the premier cognitve scientist, overwhelms the reader with evidence that there is no disntiction between the body and the mind. All humans think in terms of the relationships it has with the body. The categories whether it is a radial or idealized cognitive model, show this relationship between the body and the mind, not separated from it. Moreso, the metaphors humans use have a connection with the body and mind relationship as well. Unlike the previous philosophers and linguists, these metaphors are intelligable if they are investigated with the proper methods as Lakoff shows. This leads to conclude that their is no such thing as an objective reality, and that due to putting all these bits of information into 5 to 7 main categories, humans overlook and categorize things in terms of characteristics that they look for to put it into categories. A truly objective reality is a chaotic reality. This book, when applied to the different cultures, does put a more relativistic approach as to how one should study a culture. Without a deep investigation into the language, there is no possible way to understand how one thinks. Categories are hidden in the language not just in the grammar, phonolgy or morphology, but in metaphors as well. Lakoff gives excellent methods to do this, and therefore, a much better way to understand human thought.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't let the one star rating fool you
Review: I had thought the days when my gender could be part of a list of things, could be categorized not only as a thing, but, implicitly, a dangerous thing, were long over; clearly, Lakoff writes only for his fellow man.
Rating: 
Summary: Good and complete, but very dry and too big
Review: I'd say it's a book I'll keep and likely use as a reference but I doubt I'll ever read the whole thing. It goes into WAY too much detail about too many sub-points and comes out being very very dry reading.
It's half dictionary, 80% iterative tangents made linear and 100% too much material. The style is also a little odd, being textbookish while also seeming very peer-reviewed journal. Not quite what I was expecting.
Rating:
Summary: Breaking the Mindforged Manacles
Review: I've just started reading this book for a course on Classification Theory as it applies to Library Science and I have to say I'm quite impressed. Not only is it very readable (a special treat in itself as most text books read like stereo instructions) but it' on a fascinating subject that needs far more coverage today than it gets currently. Other reviews have summerized the contents so I'll just add that for anyone with even a passing interest in cognitive linguistics, this is where you should start.
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