''The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds'' is a 2016 nonfiction book by American author

Michael Lewis Michael Monroe Lewis (born October 15, 1960) Gale Biography In Context. is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to '' Vanity Fair'' since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. ...

, published by

W.W. Norton W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly '' The Norton ...

. ''The Undoing Project'' explores the close partnership of Israeli

psychologist A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; ; March 5, 1934 – March 27, 2024) was an Israeli-American psychologist best known for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Memor ...

and

Amos Tversky Amos Nathan Tversky (; March 16, 1937 – June 2, 1996) was an Israeli cognitive and mathematical psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned th ...

, whose work on

heuristics in judgment and decision-making Heuristics (from Ancient Greek language, Ancient Greek wikt:εὑρίσκω, εὑρίσκω, ''heurískō'', "I find, discover") is the process by which humans use mental shortcuts to arrive at decisions. Heuristics are simple strategies that hum ...

demonstrated common errors of the human psyche, and how that partnership eventually broke apart. The book revisits Lewis' interest in market inefficiencies, previously explored in his books ''

Moneyball Moneyball or money ball may refer to: * '' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game'', 2003 book by Michael Lewis ** ''Moneyball'' (film), 2011 film adaptation of the book * ''Moneyball'' (album), 2025 album by Dutch Interior * Sabermetrics ...

'' (2003), ''

The Big Short ''The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine'' is a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis about the build-up of the United States housing bubble during the 2000s. It was released on March 15, 2010, by W. W. Norton & Company. It spent 28 weeks on '' ...

'' (2010), and '' Flash Boys'' (2014). It was acclaimed by book critics.

Reception

According to the

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

Bookmarks, ''The Undoing Project'' was met largely by rave reviews, with Glenn C. Altschuler arguing in the ''

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...

'' that it "may well be his best book." Writing in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

'', law professor

Cass Sunstein Cass Robert Sunstein (born September 21, 1954) is an American legal scholar known for his work in U.S. constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and behavioral economics. He is also ''The New York Times'' best-selling author of ...

and economist

Richard Thaler Richard H. Thaler (; born September 12, 1945) is an American economist and the Charles R. Walgreen Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. In 2015, Thaler was p ...

praised the book's ability to explain complex concepts to lay readers as well as turn the biographies of Tversky and Kahneman into a page-turner: "He provides a basic primer on the research of Kahneman and Tversky, but almost in passing; what is of interest here is the collaboration between two scientists." Jennifer Senior of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' wrote that "At its peak, the book combines intellectual rigor with complex portraiture. During its final pages, I was blinking back tears, hardly your typical reaction to a book about a pair of academic psychologists."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Undoing Project 2016 non-fiction books Books by Michael Lewis W. W. Norton & Company books