Book review: Thinking Fast and Slow


Title: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Author: Daniel Kahneman

ISBN: 978-0-374-53355-7

Price: $18 from Amazon

GH rating: 60%


Summary

Didn't match up to the high expectations, for me. Wading through numerous examples with tedious explanations of subtle choices presented to experimental subjects made it a slog.

Pros

Lots of information about the experimental research studies and findings concerning the ways people think - specifically, teasing out the characteristics and consequences of the distinction between "system 1" (subconscious, autonomous, quick, intuitive and emotional) and "system 2" (conscious, laborious, slow and rational) thinking.  

Cons

With nearly 500 pages and 285,000 words, there's a lot of challenging material to study. A slimmed-down version would have been more digestable - at least for me, not being an economics professor and psychologist by profession. Frankly, I found Daniel's autobiographical descriptions of his working relationships with colleagues quite uninteresting and distracting - not what I came here for.

Value

It's a bargain at 20 bucks, but the hours you'll need to engage your system 2 to read it properly detract from that. If you simply want to skim it, put it on your bookshelf and impress visitors to your cubicle about how well-read you are, go ahead, splash the cash.

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