Last week, I was finally able to get my hands on the latest book from Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short), and it doesn't disappoint. The Undoing Project is the story of psychologists Daniel Khaneman and Amos Tversky, two men who revolutionized their field, as well as economics, sociology, business, politics, and most other humanistic areas of study. These two great thinkers developed a perspective that claims humans do not behave as rationally as we assume they do. People have varying values and make strange and foolish decisions, those that conflict with self-interest, all the time. Despite our intelligence and progeny of the Enlightenment era, we do not think mathematically or even logically most of the time. Their discovery changed the world forever.
But this book is not just about psychological experiments and research papers, though those are fascinating elements here. The Undoing Project is also about the intellectual love affair between two men of Israeli descent, who worked better together than apart, who thought with one mind and wrote with one voice, and who saw their relationship deteriorate just as it reached its zenith. With their success came the complications of recognition, travel to other countries for lecture, and teaching at various elite American universities. They struggled to maintain their focus on the work and, in true psychoanalytical fashion, allowed their unique personalities to cleave them. As if they couldn't get out of their own way, the two men barely spoke at the end of Tversky's life, who died of cancer in 1996. Khaneman's Nobel Prize for economics was accepted alone and begrudgingly in 2002.
Tversky and Khaneman were soldiers, as all Israeli citizens have been, who fought for their faith and their homeland as young men. They fought for recognition in their field, turning over the psychology establishment and, unwittingly, inventing a new course of study, behavioral economics. And, sadly, like most great duos, they eventually fought with each other. Told with the narrative panache we have come to expect from Lewis's prolific style, Tversky and Khaneman jump off the pages of this book, showing us what all humanities academics and social scientists should aim for: a better understanding of human beings.
This is a great book for students or teachers in any field. And it offers a vigorous insight into the complicated nature of humanity by way of two of its most interesting specimens. Go check it out.
But this book is not just about psychological experiments and research papers, though those are fascinating elements here. The Undoing Project is also about the intellectual love affair between two men of Israeli descent, who worked better together than apart, who thought with one mind and wrote with one voice, and who saw their relationship deteriorate just as it reached its zenith. With their success came the complications of recognition, travel to other countries for lecture, and teaching at various elite American universities. They struggled to maintain their focus on the work and, in true psychoanalytical fashion, allowed their unique personalities to cleave them. As if they couldn't get out of their own way, the two men barely spoke at the end of Tversky's life, who died of cancer in 1996. Khaneman's Nobel Prize for economics was accepted alone and begrudgingly in 2002.
Tversky and Khaneman were soldiers, as all Israeli citizens have been, who fought for their faith and their homeland as young men. They fought for recognition in their field, turning over the psychology establishment and, unwittingly, inventing a new course of study, behavioral economics. And, sadly, like most great duos, they eventually fought with each other. Told with the narrative panache we have come to expect from Lewis's prolific style, Tversky and Khaneman jump off the pages of this book, showing us what all humanities academics and social scientists should aim for: a better understanding of human beings.
This is a great book for students or teachers in any field. And it offers a vigorous insight into the complicated nature of humanity by way of two of its most interesting specimens. Go check it out.