Not in any way defending Brooks but aren't you being overly sentimental in your judgment (or rather overly judgmental)? I've not used volume once for the last 25 or so years and have had no problem reading price action. For me, the volume is already baked into the price. The reason is two-fold. First, price, for the most part, precedes volume. You rarely see volume spike before price rises. It's almost always the other way around. Be that as it may, the second reason is there are many times (and I mean many) where prices rise on low volume. According to the textbook definition, this would be considered a fake rally, but no they're not.