Review by New York Times Review
THANK YOU FOR BEING LATE: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas L. Friedman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) The Times columnist offers a readable and cohesive explanation of the forces upending our world. THE UNDOING PROJECT: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. (Norton, $28.95.) The psychologists who overturned economists' belief in rational man. WRITING TO SAVE A LIFE: The Louis Till File, by John Edgar Wideman. (Scribner, $25.) An investigation of the execution of Emmett Till's father by the United States military during World War II. A NATION WITHOUT BORDERS: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, by Steven Hahn. (Viking, $35.) Hahn's challenging new history presents the United States as an imperialistic nation from the start. THE PURSUIT OF POWER: Europe 1815-1914, by Richard J. Evans. (Viking, $40.) Evans's sweeping account traces complex, interconnected forces - political, economic and cultural - at work. BEFORE MORNING, by Joyce Sidman. Illustrated by Beth Krommes. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17.99; ages 4 to 7.) A child wishes for a blizzard to keep her mother at home in this book-length poem. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF MRS. SHARMA, by Ratika Kapur. (Bloomsbury, paper, $16.) A middle-class Delhi woman takes a lover and reflects on her life in this novel of a changing India. IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, by Edward Hoagland. (Arcade, $22.99.) A man copes with diminished vision in Hoagland's emotionally complex novel. JUANA AND LUCAS, written and illustrated by Juana Medina. (Candlewick, $14.99; ages 5 to 8.) A vivid novel about a Colombian girl who learns English. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 15, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Early on in bestselling Lewis' latest inquiry (Flash Boys, 2014; The Big Short, 2010), he appears to have hatched a hybrid of sorts: a biography of two gifted Israeli psychologists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, fused with a primer on the field of cognitive and mathematical psychology. But with each page, the book reveals itself as a radiant if cerebral romance about two brilliant minds, novel ideas, truth, country, and duty. The psychologists' personalities could not have been more different. Tversky was a charismatic genius, a fearless thinker and warrior who served his country as a paratrooper and platoon commander. Kahneman, who grew up in Nazi-occupied Paris and ended up serving as a psychologist for the Israel Defense Force, is portrayed as philosophical, continuously in need of approval by others, and possessing a depressive disposition. As opposite as these men seem to be, Lewis writes, They'd become a single mind, creating ideas about why people did what they did, and cooking up odd experiments to test them. Tversky, in particular, was fascinated by how people make decisions and looked for ways to undo accepted theories of decision-making. Their intellectual synergy produced provocative and groundbreaking theories about the workings of the human mind, including the origin of biases and the mechanisms responsible for mental errors and for formulating judgments. They challenged intuition and gut instincts, relying instead on carefully constructed algorithms which invariably proved to be more reliable than expert opinions. Tversky and Kahneman's publications made psychology increasingly relevant to medicine, law, and public policy, while their treatise, Prospect Theory, became essential to the understanding of behavioral economics. Clear in its explanation of complex subjects, tantalizing and tender, Lewis' chronicle of a scientifically fruitful friendship reveals not only what made two talented intellects click, but also what makes the rest of us tick. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Lewis is an irresistible storyteller and a master at illuminating complicated and fascinating subjects and his fans will follow his lead, wherever he goes.--Miksanek, Tony Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actor Boutsikaris narrates Lewis's latest with finesse. He creates and sustains the sense that he's right there telling you this story about two brilliant friends, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, who profoundly influenced the way we all think about thinking. In such areas as economics, medicine, sports, and government policy, they showed how intuitive judgments are generally mistaken. Boutsikaris adroitly highlights their process of discovery, their responses to their own findings, the intensity of their feelings about their evolving personal and professional collaboration and about public responses to their revolutionary theories. This is a great listen for anyone familiar with the field; Boutsikaris reads clearly but quickly, so uninitiated listeners may need to hit pause to think through Kahneman's and Tversky's concepts. A Norton hardcover. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
