This book covers a fascinating topic with far-ranging implications. The study of irrationality has already reshaped economics, helping found a new field of study - behavioral economics - which has adherents at the highest levels of government… and, I suspect, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. (Indeed, I think the study of irrationality will make a big dent in politics.) The description of the various sorts of biases that affect our thinking and cause us to behave irrationally is very illuminating. Some of it is familiar in various ways - I think availability bias is a fairly well-known term, and similarly confirmation bias, the halo effect, and the like. Kahneman provides a good explanation of where those biases come from, and how the functioning of our instinctive and deliberative mental systems produce these thought patterns.

For all of that - the book is a shade on the ponderous side, and at certain points along the way it feels very much like a catalog of psychology experiments. The sample discussions at the end of each chapter are just too cloying to be useful. Normally I find these sorts of pop academic books to be extremely engaging and fun to read (and a veritable font of cocktail conversation fodder), but this one just plodded along. I did find the material quite interesting on the whole, and definitely something to think about.