The Undoing Project contains many charms, and chief among these is its full and intimate description of the friendship between Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky. These are the two pioneering psychologists who revolutionized decision theory and demonstrated its effect on economic thought. In Mr. Kahneman’s case, it led to the Nobel Prize in economics. Michael Lewis tells his story with the enthusiasm of a newcomer to the subject. And these two innovative thinkers, who rattled the cages of the academic...
"Anything is Possible" by Elizabeth Strout
Book Reviews
Elizabeth Strout has blessed us again. Anything is Possible is a faultless series of observations of the family and townspeople of her recently renowned heroine, Lucy Barton. She adopts the format that served so well in Olive Kitteridge - lives become illuminated in a series of superb short stories relating to the principals. I waited in vain for one of the pieces to revert back to a main character covered earlier in the book. It didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen because it didn’t need to....
"Human Acts" by Han Kang
Book ReviewsAuthor Han Kang splinters her narrative in Human Acts into fragments, and thereby captures the pulverized lives of the survivors of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. It’s not only highly evocative of the partial, debilitated existences of these poor unfortunate people, but in Deborah Smith’s translation, it’s eloquent and riveting. An estimated quarter of a million South Koreans demonstrated for democratic reform a few months after General Chun Doo-Hwan seized power in the vacuum left after the...
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