Thinking, Fast and Slow and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle . Learn more

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
or
Get a £7.45 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card
Thinking, Fast and Slow
 
 
Start reading Thinking, Fast and Slow on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Thinking, Fast and Slow [Hardcover]

Daniel Kahneman
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.


Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Kindle Edition £5.49  
Hardcover £15.00  
Hardcover, 25 Oct 2011 --  
Paperback £5.21  
Unknown Binding --  
Audio Download, Unabridged £11.24 or Free with Audible.co.uk 30-day free trial
Trade In this Item for up to £7.45
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Thinking, Fast and Slow for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £7.45, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.


Product details

  • Hardcover: 499 pages
  • Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux; First Edition edition (25 Oct 2011)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0374275637
  • ISBN-13: 978-0374275631
  • Product Dimensions: 23.2 x 16.2 x 4.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (56 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 500,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Daniel Kahneman
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.

Visit Amazon's Daniel Kahneman Page

Product Description

Review

There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.Kahneman, a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, distils a lifetime of research into an encyclopedic coverage of both the surprising miracles and the equally surprising mistakes of our conscious and unconscious thinking. He achieves an even greater miracle by weaving his insights into an engaging narrative that is compulsively readable from beginning to end. My main problem in doing this review was preventing family members and friends from stealing my copy of the book to read it for themselves...this is one of the greatest and most engaging collections of insights into the human mind I have read (William Easterly Financial Times )

Absorbing, intriguing...By making us aware of our minds' tricks, Kahneman hopes to inspire individuals and organisations to identify strategies to outwit them (Jenni Russell Sunday Times )

Profound . . . As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be (The Economist )

[Thinking, Fast and Slow] is wonderful, of course. To anyone with the slightest interest in the workings of his own mind, it is so rich and fascinating that any summary would seem absurd (Michael Lewis Vanity Fair )

It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises and self-help value. It is consistently entertaining and frequently touching, especially when Kahneman is recounting his collaboration with Tversky . . . So impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky's work 'will be remembered hundreds of years from now,' and that it is 'a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.' They are, Brooks said, 'like the Lewis and Clark of the mind' . . . By the time I got to the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, my skeptical frown had long since given way to a grin of intellectual satisfaction. Appraising the book by the peak-end rule, I overconfidently urge everyone to buy and read it. But for those who are merely interested in Kahenman's takeaway on the Malcolm Gladwell question it is this: If you've had 10,000 hours of training in a predictable, rapid-feedback environment-chess, firefighting, anesthesiology-then blink. In all other cases, think (The New York Times Book Review )

[Kahneman's] disarmingly simple experiments have profoundly changed the way that we think about thinking . . . We like to see ourselves as a Promethean species, uniquely endowed with the gift of reason. But Mr. Kahneman's simple experiments reveal a very different mind, stuffed full of habits that, in most situations, lead us astray (Jonah Lehrer The Wall Street Journal )

This is a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author Of 'the Black Swan' )

Daniel Kahneman is among the most influential psychologists in history and certainly the most important psychologist alive today...The appearance of Thinking, Fast and Slow is a major event (Steven Pinker, Author Of The Language Instinct )

Daniel Kahneman is one of the most original and interesting thinkers of our time. There may be no other person on the planet who better understands how and why we make the choices we make. In this absolutely amazing book, he shares a lifetime's worth of wisdom presented in a manner that is simple and engaging, but nonetheless stunningly profound. This book is a must read for anyone with a curious mind (Steven D. Levitt, Co-Author Of 'freakonomics' )

This book is a tour de force by an intellectual giant; it is readable, wise, and deep. Buy it fast. Read it slowly and repeatedly. It will change the way you think, on the job, about the world, and in your own life (Richard Thaler, Co-Author Of 'nudge' )

[A] tour de force of psychological insight, research explication and compelling narrative that brings together in one volume the high points of Mr. Kahneman's notable contributions, over five decades, to the study of human judgment, decision-making and choice . . . Thanks to the elegance and force of his ideas, and the robustness of the evidence he offers for them, he has helped us to a new understanding of our divided minds-and our whole selves (Christoper F. Chabris The Wall Street Journal )

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a masterpiece - a brilliant and engaging intellectual saga by one of the greatest psychologists and deepest thinkers of our time. Kahneman should be parking a Pulitzer next to his Nobel Prize (Daniel Gilbert, Professor Of Psychology, Harvard University, Author Of 'stumbling On Happiness', Host Of The Award-Winning Pbs Television Series 'this Emotional Life' )

A major intellectual event . . . The work of Kahneman and Tversky was a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves (David Brooks The New York Times )

Kahneman provides a detailed, yet accessible, description of the psychological mechanisms involved in making decisions (Jacek Debiec Nature )

This book is one of the few that must be counted as mandatory reading for anyone interested in the Internet, even though it doesn't claim to be about that. Before computer networking got cheap and ubiquitous, the sheer inefficiency of communication dampened the effects of the quirks of human psychology on macro scale events. No more. We must now confront how we really are in order to make sense of our world and not screw it up. Daniel Kahneman has discovered a path to make it possible (Jaron Lanier, Author Of You Are Not A Gadget )

For anyone interested in economics, cognitive science, psychology, and, in short, human behavior, this is the book of the year. Before Malcolm Gladwell and Freakonomics, there was Daniel Kahneman who invented the field of behavior economics, won a Nobel...and now explains how we think and make choices. Here's an easy choice: read this (The Daily Beast )

I will never think about thinking quite the same. [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is a monumental achievement (Roger Lowenstein Bloomberg/Businessweek )

A terrific unpicking of human rationality and irrationality - could hardly have been published at a better moment. Kahnemann is the godfather of behavioural economics, and this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about why we make bad decisions - about everything from money to love - is full of brilliant anecdote and wisdom. It is Kahnemann's belief that anyone who thinks they know exactly what is going on hasn't understood the question; as such it's the perfect gift for opinionated family members everywhere. (Tim Adams Observer Books of the Year )

The book I most want to be given is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm a speedy thinker myself, so am hoping to be endorsed in that practice. (Sally Vickers Observer Books of the Year )

In this comprehensive presentation of a life's work, the world's most influential psychologist demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it (10 Best Books Of 2011 New York Times )

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011 (New York Times ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Review

There have been many good books on human rationality and irrationality, but only one masterpiece. That masterpiece is Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.Kahneman, a winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, distils a lifetime of research into an encyclopedic coverage of both the surprising miracles and the equally surprising mistakes of our conscious and unconscious thinking. He achieves an even greater miracle by weaving his insights into an engaging narrative that is compulsively readable from beginning to end. My main problem in doing this review was preventing family members and friends from stealing my copy of the book to read it for themselves...this is one of the greatest and most engaging collections of insights into the human mind I have read -- William Easterly Financial Times Absorbing, intriguing...By making us aware of our minds' tricks, Kahneman hopes to inspire individuals and organisations to identify strategies to outwit them -- Jenni Russell Sunday Times Profound ... As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be The Economist [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is wonderful, of course. To anyone with the slightest interest in the workings of his own mind, it is so rich and fascinating that any summary would seem absurd -- Michael Lewis Vanity Fair It is an astonishingly rich book: lucid, profound, full of intellectual surprises and self-help value. It is consistently entertaining and frequently touching, especially when Kahneman is recounting his collaboration with Tversky ... So impressive is its vision of flawed human reason that the New York Times columnist David Brooks recently declared that Kahneman and Tversky's work 'will be remembered hundreds of years from now,' and that it is 'a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves.' They are, Brooks said, 'like the Lewis and Clark of the mind' ... By the time I got to the end of Thinking, Fast and Slow, my skeptical frown had long since given way to a grin of intellectual satisfaction. Appraising the book by the peak-end rule, I overconfidently urge everyone to buy and read it. But for those who are merely interested in Kahenman's takeaway on the Malcolm Gladwell question it is this: If you've had 10,000 hours of training in a predictable, rapid-feedback environment-chess, firefighting, anesthesiology-then blink. In all other cases, think The New York Times Book Review [Kahneman's] disarmingly simple experiments have profoundly changed the way that we think about thinking ... We like to see ourselves as a Promethean species, uniquely endowed with the gift of reason. But Mr. Kahneman's simple experiments reveal a very different mind, stuffed full of habits that, in most situations, lead us astray -- Jonah Lehrer The Wall Street Journal This is a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Author Of 'the Black Swan' Daniel Kahneman is among the most influential psychologists in history and certainly the most important psychologist alive today...The appearance of Thinking, Fast and Slow is a major event -- Steven Pinker, Author Of The Language Instinct Daniel Kahneman is one of the most original and interesting thinkers of our time. There may be no other person on the planet who better understands how and why we make the choices we make. In this absolutely amazing book, he shares a lifetime's worth of wisdom presented in a manner that is simple and engaging, but nonetheless stunningly profound. This book is a must read for anyone with a curious mind -- Steven D. Levitt, Co-Author Of 'freakonomics' This book is a tour de force by an intellectual giant; it is readable, wise, and deep. Buy it fast. Read it slowly and repeatedly. It will change the way you think, on the job, about the world, and in your own life -- Richard Thaler, Co-Author Of 'nudge' [A] tour de force of psychological insight, research explication and compelling narrative that brings together in one volume the high points of Mr. Kahneman's notable contributions, over five decades, to the study of human judgment, decision-making and choice ... Thanks to the elegance and force of his ideas, and the robustness of the evidence he offers for them, he has helped us to a new understanding of our divided minds-and our whole selves -- Christoper F. Chabris The Wall Street Journal Thinking, Fast and Slow is a masterpiece - a brilliant and engaging intellectual saga by one of the greatest psychologists and deepest thinkers of our time. Kahneman should be parking a Pulitzer next to his Nobel Prize -- Daniel Gilbert, Professor Of Psychology, Harvard University, Author Of 'stumbling On Happiness', Host Of The Award-Winning Pbs Television Series 'this Emotional Life' A major intellectual event ... The work of Kahneman and Tversky was a crucial pivot point in the way we see ourselves -- David Brooks The New York Times Kahneman provides a detailed, yet accessible, description of the psychological mechanisms involved in making decisions -- Jacek Debiec Nature This book is one of the few that must be counted as mandatory reading for anyone interested in the Internet, even though it doesn't claim to be about that. Before computer networking got cheap and ubiquitous, the sheer inefficiency of communication dampened the effects of the quirks of human psychology on macro scale events. No more. We must now confront how we really are in order to make sense of our world and not screw it up. Daniel Kahneman has discovered a path to make it possible -- Jaron Lanier, Author Of You Are Not A Gadget For anyone interested in economics, cognitive science, psychology, and, in short, human behavior, this is the book of the year. Before Malcolm Gladwell and Freakonomics, there was Daniel Kahneman who invented the field of behavior economics, won a Nobel...and now explains how we think and make choices. Here's an easy choice: read this The Daily Beast I will never think about thinking quite the same. [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is a monumental achievement -- Roger Lowenstein Bloomberg/Businessweek A terrific unpicking of human rationality and irrationality - could hardly have been published at a better moment. Kahnemann is the godfather of behavioural economics, and this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about why we make bad decisions - about everything from money to love - is full of brilliant anecdote and wisdom. It is Kahnemann's belief that anyone who thinks they know exactly what is going on hasn't understood the question; as such it's the perfect gift for opinionated family members everywhere. -- Tim Adams Observer Books of the Year The book I most want to be given is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm a speedy thinker myself, so am hoping to be endorsed in that practice. -- Sally Vickers Observer Books of the Year In this comprehensive presentation of a life's work, the world's most influential psychologist demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it -- 10 Best Books Of 2011 New York Times Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011 New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Search inside this book:

Suggested Tags from Similar Products

 (What's this?)
Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
 
(1)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Jonathan Gifford VINE™ VOICE
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
This is a marvellous book. I'd hesitate to go quite so far as Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, who is quoted on the dust cover as saying, 'In the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud'. Well, maybe not quite in that league, but only because this work is the continuation of many strands of thought in psychology rather than an epoch-changing , intellectual bombshell. The ideas in this book are already, however, changing the ways in which all of us think about the way that we think (if that makes sense) and many of those strands of thought (sorry) were in any case started by Kahneman himself with his earlier collaborator, Amos Tversky, who died in 1996. Kahneman writes, selflessly and touchingly, about his fourteen years working with Tversky: `Our collaboration was the focus of our lives, and the work we did together during those years was the best either of us ever did.' Maybe Taleb is right, and in fifty years' time Kahneman and Tversky will be even more famous than they are now, and people will be asking, `Sigmund Who?' It could happen.

There are two kinds of thinking, says Kahneman, slow thinking (like doing hard mental arithmetic) and fast thinking, which happens so quickly that we don't even notice. Slow thinking takes a lot of brain energy. Our pupils dilate, revealing the increased energy that is required for such difficult mental tasks. Because our available mental energy is limited, when we are working on such `slow-thinking' mental tasks, we will be unable to take on other mental tasks and may fail even to perceive apparently obvious things: there is a strict limit to how much attention our brain can deliver at any one time.

As a result, we make most of our decisions the easy way, as in, `This seemed to work before, let's try this route again'- what psychologists call `heuristics' and what we tend to call `rules of thumb'. Our brains, not surprisingly, follow the `law of least effort'. If there is a quick route to a solution, we will take it. We hardly even notice that we have taken the quick route: our brains have the capacity to challenge any such `quick' solution but, in general - guess what? - we let it go. The problem, says Kahneman, is that our `quick thinking' is subject to a disturbingly large number of `systematic biases and errors.' Kahneman goes on to investigate an alarming number of these systematic errors and biases, of which only one is the `anchoring' effect: our decisions are affected, for example, by a number of which we have recently been made aware. `If you are asked whether Ghandi was more than 114 year old when he died you will end up with a much higher estimate of his age at death than you would if the anchoring question referred to death at 35.' In the same way, your idea of how much you should pay for a house is influenced by the asking price - even if you want to believe that it wasn't.

Our decisions can also be 'primed' by what has recently come to our attention. This leads to some relatively obvious effects - we are more likely to vote for legislation in favour of school funding if the polling station is in a school; and some far stranger effects - students exposed to a number of words related to old age walk more slowly after the exposure than groups exposed to other words. They do not report that they were aware that the words had a common theme (old age) and they are not concious of the change to their behaviour (walking more slowly).

'Substitution' causes us to answer an easier question ('How do I feel about this') rather than a harder question (What do I think about this?). 'Availability' causes us to overestimate the effect of more dramatic events, because they are more 'front of mind'. The list goes on . . .

The book offers a wealth of other compelling examples of the ways in which our `fast thinking' is prone to error, all clearly suggested by the results from a number of elegant experiments. If you don't agree with Kahneman's conclusions, devise your own experiments and test the results: this is science, not metaphysics.

Thinking Fast and Slow may (perhaps) be less famous than The Wealth of Nations or The Interpretation of Dreams in fifty years' time, but it's a lot more readable than the former and a lot more scientific than the latter. And it will change your life - or at least how you feel about the reliability and robustness of our decision-making.
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Slightly Mixed Bag 25 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I dont normally write reviews but felt I should with this book.

Im probably your average reader - an interest in psychology and to some degree, self help/improvement publications.

I have done a fair bit of academic reading, so understand the difference between an academic style of writing and a book for 'the masses'. This is where I think the book falls down. Some chapters of the book really are extremely well worded and presented to the reader - concepts are clear and not unnecessarily complicated. Other chapters lapse into a pseudo-academic style which I found tedious and tiresome. I don't really need all the statistical data and complicated information behind the proposals Kahneman makes - I want him to package it up into a readable format which dose not require me to read it three times to 'get' what he means. It really is as though someone else wrote parts of the book, as its style does seem to change significantly in places.

So, some sections are quite brilliant and inspirational, worthy of 6 starts from me....but other chapters mar the reading experience, making it quite a chore. A mixed bag........
Comment | 
Was this review helpful to you?
102 of 109 people found the following review helpful
Quick thinking 12 Nov 2011
By Hande Z TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
Daniel Kahneman has produced an excellent book. He continues to build and expand on the famous paper he and Amos Tversky published in 1974 ("Judging Under Uncertainty", a copy of which is usefully appended to this book) and has since spawned innumerable books on the theme (eg Wray Herbert's "On Second Thought"), and even related themes like Nassim Taleb's "Black Swan". "Thinking Fast and Slow" is not a textbook; it is intended for the layman who wants to have a clear and deep understanding of man's cognitive functions. Most of Kahneman's studies will amaze readers not familiar with this subject. For example, when tested, it is still remarkable that the clinical judgments of trained professionals are less accurate than statistical predictions based on a few scores or ratings. Hence counsellors who interviewed students were less accurate in their predictions on the students' performance than statistical predictions using only a few denominators such as High School grades and aptitude test results. The reason Kahneman, a psychologist, was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics was that his (and Tversky's) thesis was applied by economists to understand why economic and financial predictions so often go wildly wrong when they were (or so it was believed) so carefully and rationally made.

This review also hopes to point readers to a book I read as a student in 1967. It's called "Straight and Crooked Thinking" by R H Thouless. That book has so many similar points and Thouless was a teaching psychologist from Cambridge University in the UK. Although Thouless' book concerns flaws in the use of language and logic in thinking, it also discusses the effect of hidden bias and prejudice. Straight and Crooked Thinking has just been published in the 5th edition by R H Thouless' grandson, C R Thouless. The first was published in 1930. Kahneman's book will likely be as long lived.
Was this review helpful to you?
Most Recent Customer Reviews
How Do You See The World?
How we see the world defines the world : what it is, to us, and what we do with it, to ourselves, and others. Read more
Published 1 day ago by Mr. M. A. Reed
Book arrived
I am so looking forward to reading this book.Job well done as it arrived on time, and in excellent condition. I have heard so much about Daniel Kahneman
Ken
Published 4 days ago by Ken Oliver
Engaging retread of well known insights
(As other reviewers have mentioned, it's worth noting that the "Winner of the Nobel Prize' emblazed across this book does not refer to one of the Nobel prizes as we generally know... Read more
Published 14 days ago by Rosey Lea
Serious stuff
Well I must 'fess up to having mislaid my VINE copy (must think faster). I'm no expert but this is unignorable; one may take issue with it, as a number of critical reviewers both... Read more
Published 15 days ago by Simon G. Barrett
Excellent thoughts on how our brains work
Well structured book on an interesting topic. Occasionally the examples and facts presented seem improbable but as Kahneman explains, everything has been empirically tested... Read more
Published 1 month ago by FinPat
Great book
Ill keep this short, this is a great book! Kahneman has made it easy to understand and all in all is an intresting read.
Published 1 month ago by Whitehawk
Very disappointing and full of erroneous claims
Like many others looking forward to the publication of this book, I was expecting what the early reviews promised, ie. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Arahamites
Why I think this is one of the most important books published during...
Given the number and quality of the reviews of this book that have already appeared, there really is not much (if anything) I can contribute... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Robert Morris
Some great psychology writing, worth owning in hardback
This is an absolutely great read, not simply for the content/subject matter but style of writing, pace of the narrative, structuring of chapters, with subheadings, figures and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lark
Recommended
All about how we think - by a well recognised academic.

The book is all about why we can't really trust our own mind - it distorts, invents, contradicts and misleads us. Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. R. N. Shackelford
Search Customer Reviews
Only search this product's reviews

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 

Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   


Listmania!


Look for similar items by category


Look for similar items by subject


Feedback