The law; or, Still in pursuit

by C. Northcote Parkinson

Book by Parkinson, C. Northcote

Genres: Sociology

207 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Cyril Northcote Parkinson was a naval historian and author of some sixty books. He was educated at Cambridge, and went on to teach in Malaya, and in the United States at Harvard and in Illinois.

He was an important scholar in the field of public administration.

His most famous work is Parkinson’s Law, or The Pursuit of Progress.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightfully British series of wry observations about the paradoxical and often ridiculous nature by which institutions (states, corporations, families) often operate. The book is seventy years old and still rings mostly true today. Parkinson's first law is his best known ("work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion") but for my money it's his Law of Triviality, which states that the time spent debating or discussing anything will be inversely proportional to its relevance or importance, that rings truest and hardest in my own day to day life. You really don't need to buy or read this complete collection cover to cover as Parkinson's takes seemed to get repetitive and less relevant as he kept cooking up new ones (the law of diminishing returns, alas, is not one of his own) but the first couple are available online in full of you give a cursory Google search or two.