Undoing Project (Lewis)

The Undoing Project:  A Friendship That Changed Our Minds
Michael Lewis, 2016
W.W. Northon
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393634372


Summary
How a Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.

Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process.

Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. As a result, they created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible.

Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.

The Undoing Project is about a compelling collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures. They became heroes in the university and on the battlefield—both had important careers in the Israeli military—and their research was deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences.

Amos Tversky was a brilliant, self-confident warrior and extrovert, the center of rapt attention in any room; Kahneman, a fugitive from the Nazis in his childhood, was an introvert whose questing self-doubt was the seedbed of his ideas.

They became one of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, working together so closely that they couldn’t remember whose brain originated which ideas, or who should claim credit. They flipped a coin to decide the lead authorship on the first paper they wrote, and simply alternated thereafter.

This story about the workings of the human mind is explored through the personalities of two fascinating individuals so fundamentally different from each other that they seem unlikely friends or colleagues. In the process they may well have changed, for good, mankind’s view of its own mind. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—October 15, 1960
• Where—New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Princeton; M.B.A., London School of Economics
• Currently—Currently—lives in Berkeley, California


Michael Lewis is an American contemporary non-fiction author and financial journalist. His bestselling books include Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt (2014); The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010); The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (2006); Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003); and Liar's Poker (1989).

Background
Lewis was born in New Orleans to corporate lawyer J. Thomas Lewis and community activist Diana Monroe Lewis. He attended the private, nondenominational, co-educational college preparatory Isidore Newman School in New Orleans. Later, he attended Princeton University where he received a BA in art history in 1982 and was a member of the Ivy Club.

After graduating from Princeton, he went on to work with New York art dealer Daniel Wildenstein. Despite his degree in art history, he nonetheless wanted to break into Wall Street to make money. After leaving Princeton, he tried to find a finance job, only to be roundly rejected by every firm to which he applied. He then enrolled in the London School of Economics to pursue a Master's degree in economics.

While still in England, Lewis was invited to a banquet hosted by the Queen Mother at St. James's Palace. His cousin, Baroness Linda Monroe von Stauffenberg, one of the organizers of the banquet, purposely seated him next to the wife of the London Managing Partner of Salomon Brothers. The hope was that Lewis, just having obtained his master's degree, might impress her enough for her to suggest to her husband that Lewis be given a job with Salomon Bros.—which had previously turned him down. The strategy worked: Lewis was granted an interview and landed a job.

As a result of the job offer, Lewis moved to New York City for Salomon's training program. There, he was appalled at the sheer bravado of most of his fellow trainees and indoctrinated into the money culture of Salomon and Wall Street in general.

After New York, Lewis was shipped to the London office of Salomon Brothers as a bond salesman. Despite his lack of knowledge, he was soon handling millions of dollars in investment accounts. In 1987, he witnessed a near-hostile takeover of Salomon Brothers but survived with his job. However, growing disillusioned with his work, he eventually quit to write Liar's Poker and become a financial journalist.

Writing
Lewis described his experiences at Salomon and the evolution of the mortgage-backed bond in Liar's Poker (1989). In The New New Thing (1999), he investigated the then-booming Silicon Valley and discussed obsession with innovation.

Four years later, Lewis wrote Moneyball (2003), in which he investigated the success of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's. In August 2007, he wrote an article about catastrophe bonds entitled "In Nature's Casino" that appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

The Big Short, about a handful of scrappy investors who foresaw the 2007-08 subprime mortgage debacle, came out in 2010. Flash Boys, detailing high-speed trading in stock and other markets, was published in 2014. Like both The Big Short and Moneyball, the book features an underdog type who is ahead of the pack in understanding his industry.

Lewis has worked for The Spectator, New York Times Magazine, as a columnist for Bloomberg, as a senior editor and campaign correspondent to The New Republic, and a visiting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote the "Dad Again" column for Slate. Lewis worked for Conde Nast Portfolio but in February 2009 left to join Vanity Fair, where he became a contributing editor.

Film
The film version of Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt, was successfully released in 2011. The Big Short, with its all-star cast—Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gossling, and Brad Pitt—came out in 2015 to top reviews.

Personal life
Lewis married Diane de Cordova Lewis, his girlfriend prior to his Salomon days. After several years, he was briefly married to former CNBC correspondent Kate Bohner, before marrying the former MTV reporter Tabitha Soren in 1997. Lewis lives with Tabitha, two daughters, and one son (Quinn, Dixie, and Walker) in Berkeley, California. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/11/2016.)

Book Reviews
[The Undoing Project,] which focuses on the enchanted collaboration between Dr. Kahneman and Amos Tversky, leaves a lovely afterimage. At its peak, the book combines intellectual rigor with complex portraiture. (Mr. Lewis keeps a number of single-haired paintbrushes on hand for when fine detail is required.) During its final pages, I was blinking back tears, hardly your typical reaction to a book about a pair of academic psychologists. The reason is simple. Mr. Lewis has written one hell of a love story.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times


Lewis is the ideal teller of [Tversky and Kahneman’s] story…. You see his protagonists in three dimensions―deeply likable, but also flawed, just like most of your friends and family.
David Leonhardt - New York Times Book Review


Brilliant.... Lewis has given us a spectacular account of two great men who faced up to uncertainty and the limits of human reason.
William Easterly - Wall Street Journal


Compelling… The Undoing Project is a history of the birth of behavioral economics, but it’s also Lewis’s testament to the power of collaboration.
Peter Coy - Bloomberg Businessweek


Intellectually mesmerizing and inspiring.
Harper's Bazaar


Mind-blowing…. [The Undoing Project] will raise doubts about how you personally perceive reality.
Don Oldenburg - USA Today


A fantastic read.
Jesse Singal - New York Magazine


Lewis deftly explores a timeless and fascinating subject—human decision-making.... [A] joy to read, packed with "aha!" moments, telling and at times hilarious details, and elegant explanations of complex experiments and theories.
Publishers Weekly


As always, Lewis’ writing style is engaging and mostly irresistible.... [A]fter Lewis eases into the main subjects, he ably captures their outsized personalities.... At times, [the] details about the unlikely coupling overwhelm the larger narrative, but that is a minor complaint in another solid book from this gifted author
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for The Undoing Project...then take off on your own:

1. Talk about the two men at the center of Michael Lewis's book: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. How alike were they and how different—in temperament, personality, and background? What effect did their past(s) have on their work together? Consider, for example, their service in the Israeli military.

2. Follow-up to Question 1: Consider the unusually close collaboration between the two men—how it worked and what made it possible. What does it mean, as one of them said, "we were sharing a mind"?

3. What happened to dislodge their trust in and cooperation with one another? Given their differences, was their breakup inevitable? Is one more at fault than the other?

4. In what way do our minds constantly fool us? What are the rules of thumb that often lead us astray? What, for instance, is the "halo effect"? What is "representativeness"? Can you think of instances in your own life when your mind fooled you?

5. Talk about the spillover that the psychologist's work has had into ... economics ... medical diagnostics ... eating habits ... even cellphone use by drivers.

6. Can you identify examples in your own life of Tversky's theory of socializing? Because, say, behaving generously makes us happier, we should, therefore, surround ourselves with generous people.

7. How has Kahneman and Tversky's work affected team sports? Talk about Theo Epstein and the Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs.

8. How does this book controvert most of our longest held beliefs regarding data and observation? In reading The Undoing Project, what surprised you most? Are you skeptical of some of the findings Lewis writes about? Do you see the effects of our knew understanding in your own life?

9. Have you read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)? Have you read other books by Michael Lewis? If so, how does this compare?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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