ms_greenwitch 's review for:

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein

2.0

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If you've read other books on cognitive bias and the use of that bias to steer choices, this book isn't going to be particularly ground-breaking. The authors discuss the use of these biases in terms of "choice architecture" and "nudging," and they discuss at length whether it's appropriate to use these nudges and cues to help people or leave them with more freedom of choice. As the book goes on, they focus more and more on what they call libertarian paternalism, to the point where it started to feel like an annoying attempt to proselytize. They also would have been well-served to leave out the occasional mentions of politics, since their bias was rather obvious and, even ten years after publication, dated. All that said, if you haven't read much about cognitive bias, it's a good introduction to the topic and leaves the reader with more than a few instances of wondering why their common sense approaches aren't followed more widely.