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This book's title and content would lead one to believe that it attempts to ride the "right-brain-left-brain" car that a lot of pop science publications have been driving for a long time, searching for some fundamental division of human faculties linked to the actual division between the hemispheres of a cerebrum.

One's beliefs would be justified, as the book follows the left-right-brain story intently. It's not really the crux of the book, however.

From my perception of the book, it is easy and sometimes necessary to separate the scientific motivations behind Edwards' drawing exercises from their rationales and ultimately their results. One enters the book with an explanation for the average person's inability to draw from observation; that is, that drawing for most people is dominated by the symbolic, analytical, linguistic, mathematical chunk of the brain, the studious Left Hemisphere. Hence, the simple barrier to learning to draw from observation is allowing the creative, objective, and somewhat whimsical Right to handle the observation for us.

One can benefit from the insights held in this book without the left-right narrative, but the science behind them might, rightly, goad into drawing those who describe themselves as "not really artsy". To a high degree, that's just the person the book is largely marketed to: a person with little experience and asymptotically little interest in drawing.

That being said, whether you're a hobbyist or someone just beginning their tortuous self-criticising art career, pick up this book, give it a good read, and do the exercises if you think they'll help. Do that, and pay no more heed afterward to this book, for it limits you intently in what it advises you do to draw well. After looking through this book I very quickly turned to Burne Hogarth, Andrew Loomis, and Robert Beverly Hale, authors who focus primarily on figure drawing for illustration. Their instructions rely heavily on exactly what Edwards warns against: drawing figures by relating a system of symbols to one's perception. In the years since reading DRSB, I can safely say the authors listed prior have given me far more tools for drawing well.

Edwards' book is a good primer if you want to learn to draw accurately; if you want to draw masterfully and effortlessly, however, your only venue is, in the end, practice.