Scott E. Page(2009), The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies, Princeton University Press.

Born with a nation, religion, culture, and language different from the people around me in South Korea, I found the idea of reading a book on diversity very appealing and probably fitting to me. While I was awaiting "The Difference" to preach the acceptance of various ethnicities into one's society in a way or the other, it surpassed my expectations by defining the author's "diverse" as "different in identity, perspectives, background, heuristics, skills, information, preferences, etc." and brilliantly targetting not just someone like me, but everyone everywhere in his theory. 

The primary proposition Page tries to make in this book is that if people of cognitive diversity gather into a group, their decision making and approaches to problem-solving as a whole are bound to out-perform the results of several experts working individually. Throughout the book, he comprehensively elaborates on why diversity matters, why societies should see it as an opportunity to make the best out of, and how it can lead to better outcomes due to the variety of interpretations of problems and ways of thinking about solutions. He then goes on to prove his statements with clear but often complex theoretical reasoning and mathematics in the few last chapters. 

It was a meaningful book for me and by the time I finished reading it, my understanding of diversity had changed; I was aware of its untapped potential, the traps that may come with it, and of course, my fresh eagerness to meet, appreciate and engage with more people having various points of view in order to leverage our differences for the benefit of all. The book is purposefully thought-provoking and triggers applying some changes for the better on both any person and our communities. 

To sum up, this book revolves around an interesting subject, suggests lots of helping and surprising examples, and provides a proper summary of the empirical evidence that welcomingly calls for further thinking about and studying the implementation of disciplines and policies to consider and utilize diversity in every aspect. Because of this and its academic research nature, it is even more recommended and worth reading. I hope everyone enjoys their journey of learning about the beauties each of us brings to the world.

다양성 관련 도서 추천사 우수작, 컴퓨터공학부 석사과정생 MohammadSadegh Najafi