Books 2013: Thinking, fast and slow

I try to read every winner of the Nobel prize for literature. The rest of the winners I leave to others. But this summer I've enjoyed reading a bestseller written by another Nobel laurate, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the prize for economics in 2002. His book, Thinking, fast and slow became incredibly popular when it was published in 2011, and is about the reserach that resulted in his winning the prize.

 

This is quite far from my subject area, but his book really resonated with my views. "Yes, that is exactly how it is", was my standard thought on almost every chapter. He writes well, and he writes for a non-scientific audience. You certainly don't have to be an economist or a psychologist to enjoy this book. 

 

Much of his research is actually quite useful in my job as a librarian, working with information literacy. To simplify, one could say that his book is all about critical thinking and about using our brains. And how we all not neccessarily apply too much thinking into our decision making. I wish more people would read (and understand) it. If everyone read it, I'm sure the world would become much better:-)

One of my favourite books this year, actually. Quite a surprise to me, at least!

Kahneman, Daniel (2011): Thinking, fast and slow. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux.