THWACK! A new book has landed on my desk. It is a compact little hardback of about 200 not terribly text-heavy pages, and it is called The Obvious - all you need to know in business. Period.

The author, James Dale, certainly does his best to offer as many statements of the obvious as he can. "Simple is better than complicated," he suggests. "Change is good and bad. But mostly, it's inevitable," he warns. "Patience is a virtue. So is impatience," he declares.