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Archived book review

The Undoing Project

By Michael Lewis

Cover of The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

Lewis tells the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the two Israeli psychologists whose work on cognitive biases essentially created behavioral economics. The friendship is the frame, and Lewis is good at making you feel the intensity of their intellectual partnership.

But this isn't Lewis at his best. Flash Boys and Liar's Poker worked because the stories were inherently dramatic. Here, the drama is quieter—two academics thinking together—and Lewis sometimes strains to make it feel as urgent.

The science itself is fascinating, but if you want to understand Kahneman and Tversky's ideas, you're better off reading Thinking, Fast and Slow directly.