Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow

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The next few months are make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising. We need to raise $300,000 quickly, and we need more online readers to pitch in than have been. Please learn more in "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," where we go into the brutal economics of journalism, and what makes Mother Jones unique and worth supporting if you can right now.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

By Daniel Kahneman

FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX

Our brains have two systems for decision making: One is fast and automatic, driven by emotion; the other is a slow and deliberate, if sometimes impractical, check on the first. This engaging book, a culmination of years of work in behavioral psychology that earned Daniel Kahneman the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, examines the interplay between these systems to explain why, for instance, we vote for attractive politicians and tend to be overconfident in our ability to predict the stock market. “The issue of which of the two selves matters more is not a question only for philosophers,” Kahneman writes. It has real-life implications for politics and public policy.