In **Web Designing Usability** [1], Jakob Nielsen proclaims (p. 4) that the web is _not_ good for very long documents that need to present a steadily progressing argument. This is because very few persons read a web page : they _use_ it. So long documents over the Internet aren't very _usable_.
But Nielsen's whole argumentation portrays this reading habit as peculiar to the Web. As if it was not the case for usual books. As good and enlightning as it may be, this Nielsen book does not stand its own criticism.
Who reads aknowledgements ? Who needs a Guide to the book when you have a detailed table of contents ? Why bother saying what this book isn't ?
One can easily recognize when a book is not usable. It is not possible to know what the book is about by the tenth page. There is a plethora of examples, repeating the very same point over and over again. The argumentation is not rooted into plain common sense, but in a method, that appears suddenly as advocacy for an author, his company, and other stuff he wants to sell.
[1] http://www.useit.com/jakob/webusability/
