cognitive dissonance

Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves From the Tyranny of the Automobile

by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon and Aaron Naparstek  · 21 Oct 2025  · 330pp  · 85,349 words

, though, ads depicting drivers as rugged wilderness explorers have only become an increasingly accepted part of the media ecosystem. Ben Goldfarb thinks we accept the cognitive dissonance embodied by these ads in part because they simply reflect reality. Even the most well-meaning nature lovers in the United States don’t have

…

13.4 to 4.8. And in the Netherlands, from 7.5 to 3.0. So why aren’t we following their lead? Cognitive Dissonance and Rugged Individualism Cognitive dissonance is defined as “psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously.” Cars and car infrastructure demand a lot of it from all

…

), road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-02/erso-country-overview-2023-netherlands_0.pdf. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Cognitive dissonance is defined: Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “cognitive dissonance” accessed March 4, 2025, merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognitive%20dissonance. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT every day, about 110 people: National

…

civic engagement, 120, 231–32 Clare, Rod, 146 Clarkson, Kelly, 53 Clean Air Act, 103 climate change, 130, 166, 204, 214, 217, 218–19, 220 cognitive dissonance, 99–102 Colorado Department of Transportation, 17 community lack of and loneliness, 119–23 traffic undermining, 116–19 trust, 176–77 conflict over bike lanes

…

in action, 19 actions against, 220–21 in America, 22–23 automotive industry in, 126–27 definition of, 14 jaywalking term created by, 16 requiring cognitive dissonance, 99–102 SUV dominance in, 218–19 motorists. See drivers movement. See exercise Mr. Walker and Mr. Wheeler, 123–24 municipalities. See city and place

Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

by Louisa Lim  · 19 Apr 2022

in Big Wave Bay dating back three thousand years, to the Bronze Age. This was clear proof of prehistoric human habitation, yet some kind of cognitive dissonance had allowed me to believe the barren-rock version of history while simultaneously accepting these archaeological sites as real. When I was growing up in

…

those who had been in the room. Instead he emphasized Deng’s more reassuring message that the investors of Hong Kong could rest easy. The cognitive dissonance underpinning MacLehose’s statements echoed the British position for the next couple of years. In public they continued to explore the possibility of prolonging their

…

triangle tucked into the side of a building. She won with a vote swing of 15 percent. It was hard for me to square the cognitive dissonance of continuing resistance with the inevitability that the movement would be suppressed. Over noodles, I broached this with Cheung. She answered by describing a recent

Machine: A White Space Novel

by Elizabeth Bear  · 5 Oct 2020  · 537pp  · 146,610 words

? From the poisonous meme that had infected her? Or had she hived off the thing she called the machine in order to manage her own cognitive dissonance about saving her crew by freezing them? I wasn’t even quite sure where to begin unpacking that. Helen also seemed to look at me

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

by Aja Raden  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 85,822 words

which we can be deceived, over and over, through our own willing participation, in large part because of our need to protect against something called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a state of untenable mental stress. It occurs when you try to hold two conflicting truths (or at least beliefs) in your mind simultaneously

…

idea you need to be true in order not to have been wrong at some point. The psychological and neurological stress experienced during moments of cognitive dissonance are so great, you’ll believe anything to protect your preexisting mental paradigm. It’s why people refuse to hear proof of things like climate

…

vast, or so meaningful to them, or they simply believed in it so totally that they can’t be wrong—not about that. The potential cognitive dissonance is simply too destructive to their larger worldview.24 So they continue to believe the lie. They insist, both to others and to themselves, that

…

not anticipate. Just like the rubber-ball trick, but in the reverse. Your visual cortex, it seems, is just as susceptible to confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance as your conscious mind. The subject’s brains quite literally could not believe their eyes—so they just filtered the gorilla out of the scene

…

traits work in tandem: the ability to suspend our disbelief (and, in fact, our natural proclivity to do so) and the urgent desire to avoid cognitive dissonance, or the collision of our emotional beliefs with our rational ones. Overkill If you know only one story about “the mad monk” Rasputin, the peasant

…

so certain Rasputin could effect a magical cure may have actually affected its own cure. On second thought … that is vaguely miraculous. Cult Leaders and Cognitive Dissonance Within a few years, Rasputin was giving more than spiritual counsel; he was giving political advice and recommending individuals for advancement or ruin. All based

…

he alone could save her dying son. This state of mental conflict in which a person must consciously accommodate two mutually incompatible beliefs is called cognitive dissonance. I mentioned it earlier in regard to the Big Lie: when two ideas or beliefs are in conflict—one of them has to go in

…

’ve accepted that something is fact, even after they’re provided with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. What it mostly boils down to is more cognitive dissonance: they become incapable of processing new information, and more often than not they just can’t accept that the first fact was a lie—at

…

really bought it. The trajectory of confirmation bias (wherein you believe something and thus begin to see evidence for it everywhere you look) followed by cognitive dissonance (where you dig in your heels and believe something more the more it’s disproved) is a powerful emotional response and a form of recursive

…

the Guru is infallible. But if the Guru is infallible, then they must believe everything they say or fall victim to the unsustainable state of cognitive dissonance. Inevitably, this leads to the Guru making suggestions that involve … money. Sometimes, the money is being collected for a cause; other times, it’s just

…

, he equated that criticism to an attack on everything his parishioners believed in. He couldn’t have been more blunt if he’d just shouted “cognitive dissonance” into a microphone. But just in case any of the faithful were still questioning his moral authority, he followed that up with a sermon in

…

it turn out to be a fraud. You didn’t believe it was truth, just a fact. When the fact proves incorrect, you experience no cognitive dissonance, because your reality is not contingent on its being true. You’re not enraged or disillusioned. Just misinformed. One is a betrayal of truth, the

…

hoax, of Mencken absurdity of Battle Creek Sanitarium, of Kellogg Snake Oil Con Beecher, Henry behavioral priming belief. See also disbelief Big Lie absurdity and cognitive dissonance and lie conflicting faith relationship with general, in truth and lies lies told to change theory of mind on belief about Big Lie Alaska telegraph

…

snake oil medicine CNS. See central nervous system Coca-Cola, cocaine in cocaine, pharmaceutical marketing of cognitive bias. See also specific bias authority bias as cognitive dissonance lie belief and Rasputin and collective intelligence, honesty bias advantage of confirmation bias conflicting beliefs contagiousness, of facts counterfeit, in Forgery credit-default swap (CDS

…

Jay-Z Kellogg, John Khomeini (Ayatollah) Kierkegaard, Søren King, Clarence Kirsch, Irving Lewis, John lies. See also lying of absolute truth belief change from told cognitive dissonance and belief in general belief in truths and Hoax love of from mentalizing ability placebo effect and specific priming use for truth relationship with London

…

of religion 70 percent rule for of Weil Radithor tonic, of Bailey Ralston, William Rasputin, Grigory Yefimovich as Alexandra spiritual advisor Alexei miracle healing by cognitive dissonance and Guru Con of real fake proof, in Bait and Switch religion, Pyramid Scheme and. See also Guru Con repeated exposure, in illusory truth effect

Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead Us Into Temptation

by Chris Nodder  · 4 Jun 2013  · 254pp  · 79,052 words

Table of Contents Cover Credits About the Author About the Technical Editor Acknowledgments Foreword Introduction Evil designs and their virtuous counterparts Pride Misplaced pride causes cognitive dissonance Social proof: Using messages from friends to make it personal and emotional Closure: The appeal of completeness and desire for order Manipulating pride to change

…

this book isn’t to bemoan the lack of humility in modern society but to see how sites leverage this human weakness. Misplaced pride causes cognitive dissonance Harold Camping, the owner of familyradio.com, has been wrong a couple of times in the past. He predicted that the world would end on

…

time, most continued to believe Harold. Why? It’s all about how the brain manages to rationalize or resolve two conflicting concepts: a state called cognitive dissonance. For example, people know that smoking kills, but they continue to smoke. These dissonant thoughts don’t work well together. People resolve the issue by

…

-targeted behaviors were misaligned or even laughable. The deeper they were involved in Harold’s prophecies, the more pride they had at stake, the more cognitive dissonance they had to resolve, and so the more likely they would be to grasp on to any explanation that Harold could provide. However, after his

…

that users will be conflicted about the product or service you offer, provide them with many reasons they can use to resolve cognitive dissonance and keep their pride intact. Online, cognitive dissonance can be brought about by effects such as buyer’s remorse, in which the purchaser struggles to justify the high purchase price

…

and their desire for an item in comparison to their subsequent feelings of the item’s worth. Sites help users resolve this cognitive dissonance by giving them reasons and evidence that bolster their satisfaction with the product (positive reviews; images of famous people using the product; and promises of

…

option comes with a lifetime guarantee, so why would you choose the $300 version? Mainly because Best Made offers many superlatives that help to ease cognitive dissonance. Its product description reads more like a manifesto to the outdoors lifestyle than a listing of features. If you were to point out to owners

…

the decisions that led people to their current state is hard. Any new concept that you introduce that differs from their existing knowledge will create cognitive dissonance. People don’t like being forced to consider two competing ideas because that keeps them out of the state of closure that they desire. It

…

to leverage or to overcome. To leverage the inertia, you can provide supporting reasons to prevent buyers’ remorse, and to help remove any trace of cognitive dissonance. Hearing the same message repeated many times from different sources or seeing many other people behaving the same way (social proof) gives added weight to

…

people to make a public commitment to the new approach, it means they can no longer back down. The public commitment might set off more cognitive dissonance, but now, because they have openly aligned themselves with the new approach, the dissonant belief that will be expelled is the old one. At this

…

participant in this process. They will tend to be selective in what data they look for and believe. Because they are now trying to remove cognitive dissonance in favor of the new idea that you introduced, they will seek out reviews, certification, and other social proof that supports that viewpoint in order

…

given the choice between reading several pages of legalese or trusting that the company won’t do anything terrible with your data, they resolve the cognitive dissonance (see the chapter on Pride) and give in to sloth by leaning toward trusting the company. Of course, that trust isn’t always earned. Between

…

paid for sitting at the computer, which I would be doing anyway?” Lots of these reasons appear to be justifications that attempt to remove the cognitive dissonance of doing something that isn’t actually particularly “worthwhile” in financial terms. And that fits in nicely with some findings from way back in 1959

…

when Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith found that in situations where there is cognitive dissonance between effort and return, people will be forced to create justifications for working so hard for a small reward, thus increasing their perceived value of

…

that the people in the $1 situation had to rationalize the boring task in their minds and believe it was actually interesting to overcome the cognitive dissonance of lying about it. As Festinger said, “If a person is induced to do or say something which is contrary to his private opinion, there

…

small reward to make people create their own reasons for participating. They will come to believe and defend those reasons as a way to resolve cognitive dissonance. It might help to also subtly provide a couple of sample justifications that people could use to help accept this small reward. Hide the math

…

previously considered, regardless of whether the issues are real or fake. It subtly slips emotions into something that people expect to be rational. It creates cognitive dissonance, which people will seek to remove either by ignoring what they hear or by changing their perspective. This misinformation works its way deep into people

…

one that best demonstrates its intangible value will be seen as more desirable. Alternatively, companies can turn things on their head and use good old cognitive dissonance to get people to favor them by making a request of their customers that they later use as proof that the customer must actually like

…

Gluttony discussed how foot-in-the-door and door-in-the-face techniques work at least in part through reciprocity. Foot-in-the-door creates cognitive dissonance in the customer at the thought of refusing to do a larger favor after first doing a smaller one. In door-in-the-face the

…

became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. By asking a favor of the previously combative legislator, he made that person resolve the cognitive dissonance of lending a book to an enemy by thinking “I must not have hated him too much because I lent him that book. And he

…

only for a single favor, thank the favor-giver (removing any possibility for guilt), and then leave the favor-giver hanging in a state of cognitive dissonance. The favor-giver didn’t think they liked the individual, but they still performed the favor. Something must change in the favor-giver’s minds

…

’re susceptible to the gambler’s fallacy. That is, we believe that a win becomes more likely after a series of losses. And despite the cognitive dissonance you’d think it causes, we also believe that there is a “winning streak” effect, where after we’ve won once, we’re more likely

…

. If you expect that users will be conflicted about the product or service you offer, provide them with many reasons they can use to resolve cognitive dissonance and keep their pride intact. Dispel doubt by repeating positive messages. Hearing the same positive message several times from different trusted sources can provide the

…

homines sanctis angelis similes facit, et superbia ex angelis demones facit.” as quoted in Manipulus Florum (c. 1306), edited by Thomas Hibernicus. Cognitive dissonance Leon Festinger proposed the theory of cognitive dissonance after he studied the aftermath of Dorothy Martin’s December 21, 1954, end of the world prediction. Yes, these predictions seem to

…

happen with alarming frequency: Leon Festinger. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Illinois: Row, Peterson, 1957. Harold Camping quote: familyradio.com. Retrieved January 2012. Ig Nobel prize winners, by year: “Winners of the Ig Nobel Prize.” Improbable

…

way to verify the majority of this information would be to run an HIT that requires Turkers to paste their earnings record into the results. Cognitive dissonance between effort and return: Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith. “Cognitive consequences of forced compliance.” The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 58.2 (1959): 203

Emotional Ignorance: Lost and Found in the Science of Emotion

by Dean Burnett  · 10 Jan 2023  · 536pp  · 126,051 words

contradicts what we already think and believe often leads to a rapid negative emotional reaction, involving the experience of stress and psychological discomfort, known as cognitive dissonance.122 To stop this dissonance, we can either alter our emotional response to it and accept we’re wrong, or think about it more critically

…

): pp. 1349–1370. 46 Gentner, D. and A.L. Stevens, Mental Models (Psychology Press, 2014). 47 Brehm, J.W. and A.R. Cohen, Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance (John Wiley & Sons, 1962). 48 Marris, P., Loss and Change (Psychology Revivals): Revised Edition (Routledge, 2014). 49 Hertenstein, M.J., et al., ‘The communication of

…

, 2014, 36(2): pp. 235–262. 121 Nestler, S., ‘Belief perseverance’, Social Psychology, 2010, 41(1): pp. 35–41. 122 Brehm and Cohen, Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance. 123 Martel, C., G. Pennycook, and D.G. Rand, ‘Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news’, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 2020, 5(1

…

, 3; ‘flow’ state 1; and intrusive thoughts 1; and motivation 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; and social relationships 1, 2 see also learning (of information) cognitive dissonance 1 colours: cultural associations 1; in DB’s friend’s home 1, 2; emotional response to 1; and visual processing 1, 2, 3 communicating and

…

also negative emotions emojis and emoticons 1 emotion-cognition relationship: appraisal theory 1, 2; in attention and focus 1, 2, 3, 4; belief perseverance 1; cognitive dissonance 1; competition for brain’s resources 1, 2; confirmation bias 1, 2, 3; distinction recognised by Stoics 1; in effect of emotions experienced 1; in

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

by Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn Leszcz  · 1 Jan 1967

objectivity in the face of apparent group unanimity; and (2) members reject critical feelings toward the group at this time to avoid a state of cognitive dissonance: in other words, once an individual invests considerable emotion and time in a group and develops strong positive feelings toward other members, it becomes difficult

Black Box Thinking: Why Most People Never Learn From Their Mistakes--But Some Do

by Matthew Syed  · 3 Nov 2015  · 410pp  · 114,005 words

Dedication Part I THE LOGIC OF FAILURE Chapter 1 A Routine Operation Chapter 2 United Airlines 173 Chapter 3 The Paradox of Success Part II COGNITIVE DISSONANCE Chapter 4 Wrongful Convictions Chapter 5 Intellectual Contortions Chapter 6 Reforming Criminal Justice Part III CONFRONTING COMPLEXITY Chapter 7 The Nozzle Paradox Chapter 8 Scared

…

the most inspirational individuals I have ever interviewed, added a single, italicized sentence. So that others may learn, and even more may live. Part II COGNITIVE DISSONANCE Chapter 4 Wrongful Convictions I On August 17, 1992, Holly Staker, an eleven-year-old girl living in Waukegan, a small town in Illinois, took

…

who opposed the war had it seared on their memories. But more than half of Republicans? Nope, they couldn’t remember it at all. “Cognitive dissonance” is the term Festinger coined to describe the inner tension we feel when, among other things, our beliefs are challenged by evidence. Most of us

…

apart in their views. They had each reframed the evidence to fit in with their preexisting beliefs. Festinger’s great achievement was to show that cognitive dissonance is a deeply ingrained human trait. The more we have riding on our judgments, the more we are likely to manipulate any new evidence that

…

calls them into question. Now let us take these insights back to the subject with which we started this chapter. For it turns out that cognitive dissonance has had huge and often astonishing effects on the workings of the criminal justice system. IV On March 20, 1987, a young girl was attacked

…

of an innocent person; that the wounds of the victim’s family are going to be reopened. It must be stomach churning. In terms of cognitive dissonance, it is difficult to think of anything more threatening. As Richard Ofshe, a social psychologist, has put it: “[Convicting the wrong person is] one

…

can make—like a physician amputating the wrong arm.”21 Just think of how desperate they would be to reframe the fatality. The theory of cognitive dissonance is the only way to get a handle on the otherwise bewildering reaction of prosecutors and police (and, indeed, the wider system) to exonerating

…

often that it has been given a name by defense lawyers: “the unindicted co-ejaculator.” It is a term that usefully captures the power of cognitive dissonance. Schulz quotes from a fascinating interview with Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project: We’ll be leaving the courtroom after an exoneration and the prosecutor

…

not official opinions, meaning that they don’t analyze what went wrong. Neither does anyone else.29 Chapter 5 Intellectual Contortions I The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is often held up as a testament to the quirkiness of human psychology. It is easy to laugh when we see just how far we

…

discussion so fascinating, they wouldn’t accept it. “After each participant had finished, I explained the study in detail and went over the theory [of cognitive dissonance] carefully,” Aronson has said. Although everyone who went through the severe initiation said they found the hypothesis intriguing and that they could see how most

…

of dissonance-reduction—that a failure didn’t actually occur? It is worth noting here, too, the relationship between the ambiguity of our failures and cognitive dissonance. When a plane has crashed, it’s difficult to pretend the system worked just fine. The failure is too stark, too dramatic. This is

…

such suffering? How could these honorable people cover up their mistakes in such a brazen way? How could they live with themselves? Our exploration of cognitive dissonance finally provides us with the answer. It is precisely in order to live with themselves, and the fact that they have harmed patients, that doctors

…

of doctors and nurses are committed and decent people. Indeed, many are heroic in their care for their patients. And therein lies the tragedy of cognitive dissonance. It allows good, motivated people to harm those they are working to protect, not just once, but again and again. To put it a

…

have looked like an indictment of health care culture, but we can now see that this is a painfully accurate description of the effects of cognitive dissonance. Self-justification, the desire to protect one’s self-image, has the potential to afflict us all. The health care and criminal justice systems

…

future progress. II Let us return briefly to the Iraq War, for it will allow us to drill deeper into the psychological mechanisms associated with cognitive dissonance. To avoid controversy, we will not take a stand on whether the invasion was right or wrong.* Instead, we will look at the intellectual

…

enough. Note another thing, too. The absence of WMD had strengthened his conviction that they would be found. This is a classic response predicted by cognitive dissonance: we tend to become more entrenched in our beliefs (like those in the capital punishment experiment, whose views became more extreme after reading evidence that

…

political party has a monopoly on making mistakes, either. But what this does show is that intelligent people are not immune to the effects of cognitive dissonance. This is important because we often suppose that bright people are the most likely to reach the soundest judgments. We associate intelligence, however defined,

…

met with Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former head of communications and one of his most trusted lieutenants. We talked at length about the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. Campbell was characteristically thoughtful, talking about the buildup to war and the pressure-cooker atmosphere in Downing Street. I asked him if he still backed

…

said: “I said they would win the FA Cup, but I didn’t say when.” This example is yet another illustration of the reach of cognitive dissonance. Dissonance is not just about Tony Blair, or doctors, or lawyers, or members of religious cults, it is also about world-famous business leaders,

…

with ever-more-tortuous rationalizations as to why they were right all along. And this takes us back to perhaps the most paradoxical aspect of cognitive dissonance. It is precisely those thinkers who are most renowned, who are famous for their brilliant minds, who have the most to lose from mistakes.

…

of all. As Tetlock put it: “Ironically, the more famous the expert, the less accurate his or her predictions tended to be.” Why is this? Cognitive dissonance gives us the answer. It is those who are the most publicly associated with their predictions, whose livelihoods and egos are bound up with their

…

evidence that says otherwise. Blinded by dissonance, they are also the least likely to learn the lessons. IV A common misperception of the theory of cognitive dissonance is that it is about external incentives. People have a lot to lose if they get their judgments wrong; doesn’t it therefore make sense

…

of adapting to a mistake is outweighed by the reputational disadvantage of admitting to it. But this perspective does not encompass the full influence of cognitive dissonance. The problem is not just the external incentive structure, it is the internal one. It is the sheer difficulty that we have in admitting

…

internal urge to protect self-esteem. We spin the evidence even when it costs us. Confirmation bias is another of the psychological quirks associated with cognitive dissonance. The best way to see its effects is to consider the following sequence of numbers: 2, 4, 6. Suppose that you have to discover

…

be interpreted not as an opportunity to do what was right for the patient, but as a challenge to his competence and authority. In short, cognitive dissonance was now in play. Pronovost, however, didn’t drop his concern. He had a deep knowledge of allergies and tried to explain his reasoning.

…

you might imagine that the surgeon would be forced to accept the logic of the situation. Surely he could not persist. But the theory of cognitive dissonance offers a different possibility. The risk-benefit ratio was not about weighing the life of a patient against the few moments it would have taken

…

means that doctors make the same mistakes again and again, while growing in the mistaken conviction that they are infallible. This, in turn, increases the cognitive dissonance associated with mistakes, tightening the noose still further. Admitting to error becomes so threatening that in some cases surgeons (decent, honorable people) would rather risk

…

responsibility to lead the industry forward? It will not surprise you to hear that it is the latter. Intelligence and seniority when allied to cognitive dissonance and ego is one of the most formidable barriers to progress in the world today. In one study in twenty-six acute-care hospitals in

…

today. Ideas and beliefs of all kinds are protected from failure, but not by a totalitarian state. Instead they are protected from failure by us. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t leave a paper trail. There are no documents that can be pointed to when we reframe inconvenient truths. There is no violence perpetrated

…

you need a mindset that enables such a system to flourish. In the previous section we concerned ourselves with the mindset aspect of this equation. Cognitive dissonance occurs when mistakes are too threatening to admit to, so they are reframed or ignored. This can be thought of as the internal fear of

…

difficulty that many people face, as we have seen, is in admitting to their personal failures, and thus learning from them. We have looked at cognitive dissonance, which becomes so severe that we often reframe, spin, and sometimes even edit out our mistakes. Now think of the Unilever biologists. They didn’t

…

It feeds off flaws, difficulties, and problems. Insulating ourselves from failures—whether via brainstorming guidelines, the familiar cultural taboo on criticism, or the influence of cognitive dissonance*—is to rob one of our most valuable mental faculties of fuel. “It always starts with a problem,” Dyson says. “I hated vacuum cleaners for

…

learn from mistakes initially made no difference because professionals didn’t make any reports. The information was suppressed due to a fear of blame and cognitive dissonance. If the previous two sections of the book were about systems that institutionalize the evolutionary mechanism, the next two sections will look at the psychological

…

in some organizational contexts must—coexist with high standards for performance.9 It is worth noting here, if only briefly, the link between blame and cognitive dissonance. In a culture where mistakes are considered blameworthy they are also likely to be dissonant. When the external culture stigmatizes mistakes, professionals are likely to

…

or underhand behavior, those in Growth Mindset companies disagreed 41 percent more strongly than those in Fixed Mindset organizations. This evokes the intimate interrelationship between cognitive dissonance, blame, and openness, as mentioned in chapter 11. It is when a culture has an unhealthy attitude toward mistakes that blame is common, cover-

…

to celebrate excellent scientific work that nevertheless resulted in failure. It was about destigmatizing failure and liberating staff from the twin dangers of blame and cognitive dissonance. But can these kinds of interventions have real effects? Do they really change behavior and boost performance and adaptation? Consider an experiment involving a

…

was that many were among the brightest students, who had worked diligently for the preceding three years. It was only years later, when reading about cognitive dissonance and the Fixed Mindset, that the pieces fell into place: they were so terrified of underperforming, so worried that the exam might reveal that they

…

and Alan Axelrod, 123 conflicts in human history can be traced directly to differences in opinion, whether religious, ideological, or doctrinal.3 Think back to cognitive dissonance. This is where dissenting evidence is reframed or ignored. Wars of ideology can be seen as an extreme form of dissonant reduction: instead of shutting

…

see any data that might count against the earth-centric view of the universe. It is difficult to think of a more revelatory episode of cognitive dissonance. They simply shut their eyes. As Galileo said in a letter to the German mathematician Johannes Kepler: My dear Kepler, I wish that we

…

markets succeed because of a vital ingredient: adaptability. Different companies trying different things, with some failing and some surviving, add to the pool of knowledge. Cognitive dissonance is thwarted, in the long run, by an irrefutable failure test: bankruptcy. A company owner who runs out of money cannot pretend that his strategy

…

Medical Errors and Medical Narcissism (Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 2005). 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Jeff Stone and Nicholas C. Fernandez, “How Behaviour Shapes Attitudes: Cognitive Dissonance Processes,” in William D. Crano and Radmila Prislin (ed.), Attitudes and Attitude Change (New York: Psychology Press, 2013). 6. http://www.tonyblairoffice.org/news/entry

…

9, 25, 26, 221 black box thinking, 31 Blackstone, William, 65 Blair, Tony, 90–93, 94 blame, 12, 217–49 aviation and, 232, 239–49 cognitive dissonance and, 231 consequences of blame culture, 226–29, 231, 237–39 in corporate and political world, 225–31 fundamental attribution error and, 232 just culture

…

and, 66, 67 Iraq War decisions and, 93 justice system and, 85 randomized control trials (RCTs) and, 154–59 science and, 44 Cobley, Dan, 185 cognitive dissonance, 74–77, 86–107 ambiguity of failure and, 87 blame and, 231 confirmation bias and, 101–3 denial and, 74 disposition effect and, 101 economic

…

Dattner, Ben, 233 Dawkins, Richard, 128–29 deception, 87, 88 decision making, 11 Deep Blue, 134 Dekker, Sidney, 13, 227, 239 deliberate practice, 47 denial cognitive dissonance, as response to, 74 failure and, 18, 71 in prosecutorial responses to exonerating DNA evidence, 78–83 Diehl, Alan, 27, 28, 29, 30 Disch, Joanne

…

experience, 45–46 expertise, 45–46 external deception, 87, 88 eyewitnesses, 114–15 Fagan, Charles, 120 failure, 8, 11–13, 14–15 ambiguity of, and cognitive dissonance, 87 attitude and, 16, 58–59 avoidance and, 101 denial and, 18, 71, 88–89 education and, 267–69 entrepreneurship and, 269–72 fear and

…

War II, 33–37 Wright brothers, 199 wrongful convictions, 63–71, 77–85, 114–17 Borchard’s compilation of, 67 Bromgard case, 77–79, 116 cognitive dissonance and, 79–83 DNA evidence and, 68–71, 77, 79–83, 84, 120 drive-bys and, 114 exonerations through DNA testing, 69–70 eyewitness identification

Surfaces and Essences

by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander  · 10 Sep 2012  · 1,079pp  · 321,718 words

office” to designate the standard workplace of their host, while he himself would always call it “my study”. After he had put up with this cognitive dissonance for a couple of days, it occurred to him to ask them, “How come the two of you always go around talking about my ‘office

…

surface level are nonetheless “exactly the same thing”. In the meantime, though, they all pooh-pooh the interest of such a goal… How to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance in a Fox Æsop’s fox-and-grapes fable, more than two millennia old, insightfully anticipated some rather recent ideas. From the 1950’s onwards

…

, thanks to the pioneering work of social psychologist Leon Festinger, the notions of cognitive dissonance and its reduction have been part of psychology, and they are direct descendants of the fable, which, in expositions of the theory, is often given

…

tension that the individual tries to reduce by modifying one or another of their conflicting internal states. Thus, the fox is in a state of cognitive dissonance, since his desire to eat the grapes conflicts with his inability to reach them. He thus modifies one of the two causes of the conflict

…

that a traumatic experience leaves lasting after-effects in its wake, so the sour-grapes fable contains the essence of the notion of reduction of cognitive dissonance, and more generally, the notion of rationalization, where a painful situation is rendered less painful by the unconscious generation, after the fact, of some kind

…

only has survived many centuries but it also anticipated developments in modern psychology. To see how the sour-grapes fable relates to the notion of cognitive dissonance in its full generality, one can cast the notion of disparagement of an unrealized yearning, which is the fable’s crux, as a special case

…

more general notion of regaining a peaceful frame of mind by distorting one’s perception of a troubling situation, which is what the reduction of cognitive dissonance is all about. Equipped with this new category, we will far more easily and more rapidly recognize situations in which people spontaneously invent novel justifications

…

(that is, situations whose protagonist lacks honesty and sincerity). In this category are found many situations that have nothing to do with the reduction of cognitive dissonance. Some simple examples would be: A person who would file false reports after having had an automobile accident; Politicians who would distort facts about the

…

idea of light being both particulate and wavelike was inconceivable. Nonetheless, his experiments wound up confirming Einstein’s predictions perfectly, which plunged Millikan into deep cognitive dissonance. In a major book summarizing his work, published in 1917, Millikan admitted that his results supported Einstein’s revolutionary predictions to the hilt, but he

…

shows that even for the most audacious of spirits, it sometimes takes a great deal of time and intense concentration, not to mention analogy-driven cognitive dissonance, to carry out what might seem, after the fact, to be the most elementary of conceptual reversals. From 1905 to 1907 in a Nutshell Below

…

to movement). These two resemblances constitute the heart of the incipient mass–energy analogy. At the same time, a lack of symmetry gives rise to cognitive dissonance… •Energy (since it is not composed of particles) is endowed with strange mass, but it has no normal mass. Also the reverse holds: any object

…

). This mass–energy mismatch is a serious blight on the incipient analogy linking the two concepts. Thanks to a hypothesis that restores “cosmic unity”, the cognitive dissonance is dissipated… •Since there is no partition separating different types of energy, and since there is a promising analogy linking energy to mass, then if

…

de Bellegarde and Phædrus are relevant to our section on Æsop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes”. Festinger’s book is a classic on cognitive dissonance. The books by Carroll and by Sapir deal with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and the volume by Atran and Medin covers the way that culture

…

Thom (1982). Penser les mathématiques. Séminaire de philosophie et mathématiques de l’École normale supérieure. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Festinger, Leon (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Flynn, James R. (1987). “Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure”. Psychological Bulletin, 101, pp. 171–191

…

, 230; stirred with absurdly thin sticks, 317, 321–322; three stars awarded for, by Guide Michelin, 462 cognitive (anti-)economy, in memory retrieval, 341–344 cognitive dissonance: as a driving force in creativity, 483, 484, 490–491; reduction of, as a category, 115–117; situations exemplifying the drive to reduce, 116; see

…

, 511; of category distinctions never taught in schools, 126, 127; of children’s semantic approximations, 39–41; of chunked items in grocery stores, 92; of cognitive-dissonance reduction situations, 116; of colorful acts of categorization, 510; of common metaphorical uses of words, 62; of compound words in French and Italian, 89; of

…

, 354–357; to make equations reflect cause and effect, 407–411; pushing for creative analogies, 300–301, 355–356, 458, 477, 480–481; see also cognitive dissonance prime numbers: generalized to “prime groups”, 449; generalized to “prime knots”, 449; generalized to primes inside rings, 448 primitive needs as primeval forces, 314 “prison

Virus of the Mind

by Richard Brodie  · 4 Jun 2009  · 289pp  · 22,394 words

seven times. It takes that many repetitions to implant the Buy me meme in the customer. — The second way is through a mechanism known as cognitive dissonance. When things don’t make sense, our minds struggles to make them make sense. Imagine, for example, that a friend is upset with you, but

…

Bill and lunch that will influence your future behavior. I’ve heard it said that geniuses develop their most brilliant original thoughts through self-imposed cognitive dissonance. As 126 How We Get Programmed you might guess, then, as a programming method it is particularly effective with intelligent people, because you actually believe

…

some behavior, think about what memes that operant conditioning is programming you with. Do they serve your purpose in life? Cognitive Dissonance Another programming technique is creating mental pressure and resolving it—cognitive dissonance. Why do high-pressure sales tactics exist even though people universally despise them? As with any “why” question in the

…

no question, however, that it does work on some people some of the time. High-pressure sales work by making you mentally uncomfortable—by creating cognitive dissonance. You enter the situation with some strategy-memes that make you resist buying: perhaps they are something like Look before you leap or Shop around

…

. Your mind wants to resolve the conflict. It does so by creating a new meme. There are two ways to release the pressure caused by cognitive dissonance: buy in or bail out. If you bail out, it’s likely to be because you’ve resolved the dissonance by creating a meme such

…

what 130 How We Get Programmed a smart decision you’ve made and even calling a few days later and congratulating you on your purchase. Cognitive dissonance can be used to create a meme of submission and loyalty to whatever authority is causing the dissonance. Fraternity hazings, boot camp, and some religious

…

before releasing the pressure. That creates an association-meme between the demonstration of loyalty and the good feeling caused by the release of pressure. With cognitive dissonance, people end up believing they have received something valuable, something deserving of their loyalty, when in reality all that has happened is that the people

…

stronger memes—to give the reward only occasionally than it does to give it all the time. That could be because withholding the reward adds cognitive dissonance to the operant conditioning. So a truly manipulative meme programmer will withhold the reward most of the time even if the subject performs flawlessly, knowing

…

who withheld the A’s much of the time. The occasional A reinforces the Work hard meme more than the constant A because it adds cognitive dissonance. Talk shows are filled with people who stay involved in relationships they say are awful most of the time—perhaps the conditioning and dissonance of

…

the infection. Here’s what it looks like when you’re infected by a mind virus: Penetration We looked at three methods of penetration: repetition, cognitive dissonance, and the Trojan horse. When a virus of the mind infects you, it may resemble one of these scenarios: 142 How We Get Programmed — Repetition

…

control or abortion (if you are not among the first to be infected, you could hear it from a wide variety of different infected people) — Cognitive dissonance. Being placed in a paradoxical or mentally uncomfortable situation can lead to being reprogrammed with new memes that relieve the mental stress: • Going through an

…

than the more practical ones involving danger, food, and sex, but not so hard that our Stone Age friends couldn’t venture a guess. The cognitive dissonance set up by having these questions in mind caused the creation of some memes that made sense as answers. And from these guesses evolved mythology

…

seders, and the times you get to eat during the fast of Ramadan all add attractive memes to a religion. Fasts, in fact, set up cognitive dissonance to reinforce the memes you were fasting for. *You have to believe before you can eat: feasts are for Baha’is only. 188 The Memetics

…

consequences of leaving meme, the same one used by cults to keep people in line. Another method of bonding people to an organization is the cognitive-dissonance effect of the initiation ordeal. By putting people through a trial by ordeal such as a fraternity hazing, one of two things occur: either the

…

you would otherwise think. Youth gangs typically have initiations involving committing a serious crime. These serve a dual purpose: the programming or brainwashing effect of cognitive dissonance, and the assurance that the initiate has bought into the lawlessness of the gang culture. I used to watch a lot of television. I don

…

seminar series. Participants attend a severalday, intensive seminar that leaves them feeling very good. Mixed in with the course content is the use of conditioning, cognitive-dissonance, and Trojan-horse techniques that program people to do two things: recruit new participants for the next 206 Designer Viruses (How to Start a Cult

…

Level 3, you pick a purpose for your life and hold it as your highest priority. If you commit strongly enough to this purpose, the cognitive dissonance created with old memes that don’t support this purpose will result in some reprogramming. After time, you’ll find yourself becoming more and more

…

, 46, 145 operant conditioning and, 129 238 Index religion and, 128 See also under button-pushing memes Cleary, Thomas, 217 Coca-Cola, 21, 129, 153 cognitive dissonance, 126–27, 130–31, 143, 203 cognitive therapy, 8 communication, evolution of, 71–72 confidence games, 140–42 Congreve, William, 81 consciousness, 76–77, 228

…

, 200–201 memes, 71–72 biological definition of, 5–6 bundling of, 132–33 classes of, 19–25, 70–71 cognitive definition of, 8–11 cognitive dissonance and, 126–27, 130–31 concept of, xvi conditioning and, 126, 127–30 danger and, 111–12, 117 embedding of, 133–35 evangelism and, 80

…

quality of life and, xix–xxi Truth and, 16 243 virus of the mind Mensa, 67 Microsoft, 1, 28, 205–6 mind viruses, 15–16 cognitive dissonance and, 143 concept of, xvi cultural institutions and, 34 cultural viruses and, 45–46 definition of, 16 designer viruses and, 45–46, 195–96 evangelism

Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson  · 6 May 2007  · 420pp  · 98,309 words

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations With Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason

by Lee McIntyre  · 14 Sep 2021  · 407pp  · 108,030 words

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World

by Iain McGilchrist  · 8 Oct 2012

Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art and New Science of Changing Minds

by Kevin Dutton  · 3 Feb 2011  · 338pp  · 100,477 words

The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

by Michael Huemer  · 29 Oct 2012  · 577pp  · 149,554 words

Psychopath Free (Expanded Edition): Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People

by Jackson MacKenzie  · 31 Aug 2015  · 204pp  · 67,319 words

Power

by Shahida Arabi  · 11 Jan 2017

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown

by Philip Mirowski  · 24 Jun 2013  · 662pp  · 180,546 words

Finance and the Good Society

by Robert J. Shiller  · 1 Jan 2012  · 288pp  · 16,556 words

The Little Black Book of Decision Making

by Michael Nicholas  · 21 Jun 2017

Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City

by Richard Sennett  · 9 Apr 2018

The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation

by Cathy O'Neil  · 15 Mar 2022  · 318pp  · 73,713 words

How the Mind Works

by Steven Pinker  · 1 Jan 1997  · 913pp  · 265,787 words

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time

by Maria Konnikova  · 28 Jan 2016  · 384pp  · 118,572 words

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker  · 24 Sep 2012  · 1,351pp  · 385,579 words

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy)

by Benjamin Peters  · 2 Jun 2016  · 518pp  · 107,836 words

Time Paradox

by Philip G. Zimbardo and John Boyd  · 1 Jan 2008  · 297pp  · 96,509 words

The Unpersuadables: Adventures With the Enemies of Science

by Will Storr  · 1 Jan 2013  · 476pp  · 134,735 words

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist

by Michael Shermer  · 8 Apr 2020  · 677pp  · 121,255 words

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie  · 20 Jul 2020

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World

by James Ball  · 19 Jul 2023  · 317pp  · 87,048 words

Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals

by David Aronson  · 1 Nov 2006

The 9/11 Wars

by Jason Burke  · 1 Sep 2011  · 885pp  · 271,563 words

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

by Steven Pinker  · 1 Jan 2002  · 901pp  · 234,905 words

Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error

by Kathryn Schulz  · 7 Jun 2010  · 486pp  · 148,485 words

You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself

by David McRaney  · 29 Jul 2013  · 280pp  · 90,531 words

Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

by Emily Nagoski Ph.d.  · 3 Mar 2015  · 473pp  · 121,895 words

Rationality: From AI to Zombies

by Eliezer Yudkowsky  · 11 Mar 2015  · 1,737pp  · 491,616 words

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

by Robert M. Sapolsky  · 1 May 2017  · 1,261pp  · 294,715 words

The Covert Passive-Aggressive Narcissist: Recognizing the Traits and Finding Healing After Hidden Emotional and Psychological Abuse

by Debbie Mirza  · 6 Dec 2017  · 194pp  · 59,290 words

The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling

by Arlie Russell Hochschild  · 1 Nov 1983

Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married

by Abby Ellin  · 15 Jan 2019  · 340pp  · 91,745 words

The Joys of Compounding: The Passionate Pursuit of Lifelong Learning, Revised and Updated

by Gautam Baid  · 1 Jun 2020  · 1,239pp  · 163,625 words

Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models

by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann  · 17 Jun 2019

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal  · 26 Dec 2013  · 199pp  · 43,653 words

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease

by Gary Taubes  · 25 Sep 2007  · 936pp  · 252,313 words

The Science of Hate: How Prejudice Becomes Hate and What We Can Do to Stop It

by Matthew Williams  · 23 Mar 2021  · 592pp  · 125,186 words

Left Behind

by Paul Collier  · 6 Aug 2024  · 299pp  · 92,766 words

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil

by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Francis de Véricourt  · 10 May 2021  · 291pp  · 80,068 words

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture

by Ellen Ruppel Shell  · 2 Jul 2009  · 387pp  · 110,820 words

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed With Alcohol

by Holly Glenn Whitaker  · 9 Jan 2020  · 334pp  · 109,882 words

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

by Steven Pinker  · 13 Feb 2018  · 1,034pp  · 241,773 words

Influence: Science and Practice

by Robert B. Cialdini  · 1 Jan 1984  · 405pp  · 121,531 words

The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

by Joseph Henrich  · 7 Sep 2020  · 796pp  · 223,275 words

Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking

by Richard E. Nisbett  · 17 Aug 2015  · 397pp  · 109,631 words

The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning

by Jeremy Lent  · 22 May 2017  · 789pp  · 207,744 words

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

by Michael J. Mauboussin  · 6 Nov 2012  · 256pp  · 60,620 words

Licence to be Bad

by Jonathan Aldred  · 5 Jun 2019  · 453pp  · 111,010 words

The Irrational Bundle

by Dan Ariely  · 3 Apr 2013  · 898pp  · 266,274 words

The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living

by Brock Bastian  · 25 Jan 2018

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology

by Kentaro Toyama  · 25 May 2015  · 494pp  · 116,739 words

Other People's Money: Masters of the Universe or Servants of the People?

by John Kay  · 2 Sep 2015  · 478pp  · 126,416 words

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer

by Duncan J. Watts  · 28 Mar 2011  · 327pp  · 103,336 words

Adam Smith: Father of Economics

by Jesse Norman  · 30 Jun 2018

Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend

by Barbara Oakley Phd  · 20 Oct 2008

The Simple Living Guide

by Janet Luhrs  · 1 Apr 2014

Inside the Nudge Unit: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference

by David Halpern  · 26 Aug 2015  · 387pp  · 120,155 words

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business

by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro  · 30 Aug 2021  · 345pp  · 92,063 words

Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 21 Mar 2013  · 323pp  · 95,939 words

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

by Francis Fukuyama  · 11 Apr 2011  · 740pp  · 217,139 words

The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy

by Seth Mnookin  · 3 Jan 2012  · 566pp  · 153,259 words

If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?

by Raj Raghunathan  · 25 Apr 2016  · 505pp  · 127,542 words

Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything

by Peter Morville  · 14 May 2014  · 165pp  · 50,798 words

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure

by Tim Harford  · 1 Jun 2011  · 459pp  · 103,153 words

Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism

by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart  · 31 Dec 2018

The Lucky Years: How to Thrive in the Brave New World of Health

by David B. Agus  · 29 Dec 2015  · 346pp  · 92,984 words

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

by Amanda Montell  · 14 Jun 2021  · 244pp  · 73,700 words

You Are Not So Smart

by David McRaney  · 20 Sep 2011  · 270pp  · 83,506 words

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice

by Jamie K. McCallum  · 15 Nov 2022  · 349pp  · 99,230 words

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg  · 8 Mar 2016  · 401pp  · 119,488 words

Busy

by Tony Crabbe  · 7 Jul 2015  · 254pp  · 81,009 words

The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

by Jason Fung  · 3 Mar 2016  · 321pp  · 90,850 words

The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning

by James E. Lovelock  · 1 Jan 2009  · 239pp  · 68,598 words

Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris

by Richard Kluger  · 1 Jan 1996  · 1,157pp  · 379,558 words

Strategy: A History

by Lawrence Freedman  · 31 Oct 2013  · 1,073pp  · 314,528 words

Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America

by Shawn Lawrence Otto  · 10 Oct 2011  · 692pp  · 127,032 words

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us)

by Tom Vanderbilt  · 28 Jul 2008  · 512pp  · 165,704 words

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

by Sathnam Sanghera  · 28 Jan 2021  · 430pp  · 111,038 words

A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century: Evolution and the Challenges of Modern Life

by Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein  · 14 Sep 2021  · 384pp  · 105,110 words

Engineering Security

by Peter Gutmann

The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness

by Suzanne O'Sullivan  · 31 Mar 2021  · 319pp  · 101,673 words

Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider’s View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

by Kenneth Rogoff  · 27 Feb 2025  · 330pp  · 127,791 words

A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy

by Joel Mokyr  · 8 Jan 2016  · 687pp  · 189,243 words

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It

by Lawrence Lessig  · 4 Oct 2011  · 538pp  · 121,670 words

The Irrational Economist: Making Decisions in a Dangerous World

by Erwann Michel-Kerjan and Paul Slovic  · 5 Jan 2010  · 411pp  · 108,119 words

Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery

by Henry Marsh  · 3 May 2017  · 257pp  · 84,498 words

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 1 Jan 2011  · 447pp  · 141,811 words

Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America

by Christopher Wylie  · 8 Oct 2019

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb  · 20 Feb 2018  · 306pp  · 82,765 words

Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek

by Rutger Bregman  · 13 Sep 2014  · 235pp  · 62,862 words

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter  · 9 Jan 2007  · 280pp  · 82,623 words

Late Bloomers: The Power of Patience in a World Obsessed With Early Achievement

by Rich Karlgaard  · 15 Apr 2019  · 321pp  · 92,828 words

The Nature of Technology

by W. Brian Arthur  · 6 Aug 2009  · 297pp  · 77,362 words

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone, Especially Ourselves

by Dan Ariely  · 27 Jun 2012  · 258pp  · 73,109 words

Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age

by Manuel Castells  · 19 Aug 2012  · 291pp  · 90,200 words

Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence

by Richard Yonck  · 7 Mar 2017  · 360pp  · 100,991 words

Why Buddhism is True

by Robert Wright

The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family

by Jesselyn Cook  · 22 Jul 2024  · 321pp  · 95,778 words

This Chair Rocks: A Manifiesto Against Ageism

by Ashton Applewhite  · 10 Feb 2016  · 312pp  · 84,421 words

The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism

by Hubert Joly  · 14 Jun 2021  · 265pp  · 75,202 words

Gnomon

by Nick Harkaway  · 18 Oct 2017  · 778pp  · 239,744 words

Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel

by Max Blumenthal  · 27 Nov 2012  · 840pp  · 224,391 words

The Rapture of the Nerds

by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross  · 3 Sep 2012  · 311pp  · 94,732 words

Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web

by Paul Adams  · 1 Nov 2011  · 123pp  · 32,382 words

Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres

by Jamie Woodcock  · 20 Nov 2016

Urban Transport Without the Hot Air, Volume 1

by Steve Melia  · 351pp  · 91,133 words

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

by Dan Ariely  · 31 May 2010  · 324pp  · 93,175 words

How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

by Michael Pollan  · 30 Apr 2018  · 547pp  · 148,732 words

The Power of Passive Investing: More Wealth With Less Work

by Richard A. Ferri  · 4 Nov 2010  · 345pp  · 87,745 words

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women

by Hanna Rosin  · 31 Aug 2012  · 320pp  · 96,006 words

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date

by Samuel Arbesman  · 31 Aug 2012  · 284pp  · 79,265 words

The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever

by Christopher Hitchens  · 14 Jun 2007  · 740pp  · 236,681 words

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI

by Karen Hao  · 19 May 2025  · 660pp  · 179,531 words

The Quantum Thief

by Hannu Rajaniemi  · 1 Jan 2010  · 324pp  · 91,653 words

The omnivore's dilemma: a natural history of four meals

by Michael Pollan  · 15 Dec 2006  · 467pp  · 503 words

The Economics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker's Guide to Microeconomics

by Rod Hill and Anthony Myatt  · 15 Mar 2010

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

by Richard H. Thaler  · 10 May 2015  · 500pp  · 145,005 words

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero

by Tyler Cowen  · 8 Apr 2019  · 297pp  · 84,009 words

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

by Linsey McGoey  · 14 Apr 2015  · 324pp  · 93,606 words

Future Shock

by Alvin Toffler  · 1 Jun 1984  · 286pp  · 94,017 words

Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement

by Amy Lang and Daniel Lang/levitsky  · 11 Jun 2012  · 537pp  · 99,778 words

Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

by Anand Giridharadas  · 27 Aug 2018  · 296pp  · 98,018 words

Stocks for the Long Run 5/E: the Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long-Term Investment Strategies

by Jeremy Siegel  · 7 Jan 2014  · 517pp  · 139,477 words

Aurora

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 6 Jul 2015  · 488pp  · 148,340 words

Tyler Cowen-Discover Your Inner Economist Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist-Plume (2008)

by Unknown  · 20 Sep 2008  · 246pp  · 116 words

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

by Adam Grant  · 2 Feb 2016  · 410pp  · 101,260 words

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

by Naomi Klein  · 15 Sep 2014  · 829pp  · 229,566 words

The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder

by Sean McFate  · 22 Jan 2019  · 330pp  · 83,319 words

Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities

by Eric Kaufmann  · 24 Oct 2018  · 691pp  · 203,236 words

The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions

by Greta Thunberg  · 14 Feb 2023  · 651pp  · 162,060 words

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future

by Paul Krugman  · 28 Jan 2020  · 446pp  · 117,660 words

Becoming Kim Jong Un: A Former CIA Officer's Insights Into North Korea's Enigmatic Young Dictator

by Jung H. Pak  · 14 Apr 2020  · 395pp  · 103,437 words

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

by William D. Cohan  · 25 Dec 2015  · 1,009pp  · 329,520 words

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath and Dan Heath  · 10 Feb 2010  · 307pp  · 94,069 words

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

by Dan Heath  · 3 Mar 2020

What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society

by Paul Verhaeghe  · 26 Mar 2014  · 208pp  · 67,582 words

Open: The Story of Human Progress

by Johan Norberg  · 14 Sep 2020  · 505pp  · 138,917 words

Rush Hour: How 500 Million Commuters Survive the Daily Journey to Work

by Iain Gately  · 6 Nov 2014  · 352pp  · 104,411 words

Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism

by Ed West  · 19 Mar 2020  · 530pp  · 147,851 words

Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse

by Thomas Chatterton Williams  · 4 Aug 2025  · 242pp  · 76,315 words

The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 14 Sep 2017  · 520pp  · 153,517 words

The Moral Animal: Evolutionary Psychology and Everyday Life

by Robert Wright  · 1 Jan 1994  · 604pp  · 161,455 words

Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World

by Timothy Ferriss  · 14 Jun 2017  · 579pp  · 183,063 words

Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis

by Anatole Kaletsky  · 22 Jun 2010  · 484pp  · 136,735 words

Stocks for the Long Run, 4th Edition: The Definitive Guide to Financial Market Returns & Long Term Investment Strategies

by Jeremy J. Siegel  · 18 Dec 2007

Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It

by Gary Taubes  · 28 Dec 2010  · 255pp  · 75,208 words

Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It

by Richard V. Reeves  · 22 May 2017  · 198pp  · 52,089 words

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists

by Julia Ebner  · 20 Feb 2020  · 309pp  · 79,414 words

The World According to Physics

by Jim Al-Khalili  · 10 Mar 2020  · 198pp  · 57,703 words

Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny

by Robert Wright  · 28 Dec 2010

On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane

by Emily Guendelsberger  · 15 Jul 2019  · 382pp  · 114,537 words

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy

by David Sawyer  · 17 Aug 2018  · 572pp  · 94,002 words

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis

by James Rickards  · 15 Nov 2016  · 354pp  · 105,322 words

Seeking SRE: Conversations About Running Production Systems at Scale

by David N. Blank-Edelman  · 16 Sep 2018

Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company

by Patrick McGee  · 13 May 2025  · 377pp  · 138,306 words

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right

by George R. Tyler  · 15 Jul 2013  · 772pp  · 203,182 words

50 Psychology Classics

by Tom Butler-Bowdon  · 14 Oct 2007  · 363pp  · 109,374 words

New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future

by James Bridle  · 18 Jun 2018  · 301pp  · 85,263 words

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans

by Melanie Mitchell  · 14 Oct 2019  · 350pp  · 98,077 words

The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism

by Olivia Fox Cabane  · 1 Mar 2012  · 287pp  · 81,014 words

Thinking in Bets

by Annie Duke  · 6 Feb 2018  · 288pp  · 81,253 words

Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child

by Alissa Quart  · 16 Aug 2006

The Techno-Human Condition

by Braden R. Allenby and Daniel R. Sarewitz  · 15 Feb 2011

Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan's Army Conquered the Web

by Cole Stryker  · 14 Jun 2011  · 226pp  · 71,540 words

Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories From the Frontline

by Steven K. Kapp  · 19 Nov 2019

Duty of Care: One NHS Doctor's Story of the Covid-19 Crisis

by Dr Dominic Pimenta  · 2 Sep 2020  · 304pp  · 95,306 words

The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries

by Kathi Weeks  · 8 Sep 2011  · 350pp  · 110,764 words

The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You

by Eli Pariser  · 11 May 2011  · 274pp  · 75,846 words

The Sellout: A Novel

by Paul Beatty  · 2 Mar 2016  · 271pp  · 83,944 words

Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age

by Virginia Eubanks  · 1 Feb 2011  · 289pp  · 99,936 words

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

by David Graeber  · 14 May 2018  · 385pp  · 123,168 words

The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune

by Alexander Stille  · 19 Jun 2023  · 436pp  · 148,809 words

The Transhumanist Reader

by Max More and Natasha Vita-More  · 4 Mar 2013  · 798pp  · 240,182 words

Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life

by David Allen  · 30 Dec 2008

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory

by Kariappa Bheemaiah  · 26 Feb 2017  · 492pp  · 118,882 words

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman  · 17 Mar 2015  · 527pp  · 147,690 words

The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive

by Brian Christian  · 1 Mar 2011  · 370pp  · 94,968 words

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence

by John Brockman  · 5 Oct 2015  · 481pp  · 125,946 words

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

by Roger Fisher and Bruce Patton  · 15 Mar 1991  · 242pp  · 60,595 words

Glasshouse

by Charles Stross  · 14 Jun 2006  · 443pp  · 123,526 words

Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

by Brigid Schulte  · 11 Mar 2014  · 455pp  · 133,719 words

The Four Horsemen

by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett  · 19 Mar 2019  · 114pp  · 30,715 words

Future Tense: Jews, Judaism, and Israel in the Twenty-First Century

by Jonathan Sacks  · 19 Apr 2010  · 305pp  · 97,214 words

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today

by Jane McGonigal  · 22 Mar 2022  · 420pp  · 135,569 words

A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

by Cal Newport  · 2 Mar 2021  · 350pp  · 90,898 words

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US

by Rana Foroohar  · 5 Nov 2019  · 380pp  · 109,724 words

Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters

by Joanna Walsh  · 22 Sep 2025  · 255pp  · 80,203 words

Redrobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood  · 1 Jan 2000  · 398pp  · 109,479 words

The Behavioral Investor

by Daniel Crosby  · 15 Feb 2018  · 249pp  · 77,342 words

The Village Effect: How Face-To-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter

by Susan Pinker  · 30 Sep 2013  · 404pp  · 124,705 words

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt  · 14 Jun 2018  · 531pp  · 125,069 words

Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction

by Judith Grisel  · 15 Feb 2019  · 213pp  · 68,363 words

Badvertising

by Andrew Simms  · 314pp  · 81,529 words

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 1 Mar 2015  · 479pp  · 144,453 words

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence

by Jacob Turner  · 29 Oct 2018  · 688pp  · 147,571 words

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

by Michael Shermer  · 1 Jan 1997  · 404pp  · 134,430 words

Algospeak: How Social Media Is Transforming the Future of Language

by Adam Aleksic  · 15 Jul 2025  · 278pp  · 71,701 words

The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart

by Bill Bishop and Robert G. Cushing  · 6 May 2008  · 484pp  · 131,168 words

Switched On: My Journey From Asperger's to Emotional Awakening

by John Elder Robison  · 6 Apr 2016  · 316pp  · 106,321 words

Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

by Antonio Garcia Martinez  · 27 Jun 2016  · 559pp  · 155,372 words

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

by Adam L. Alter  · 15 Feb 2017  · 331pp  · 96,989 words

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles

by Fintan O'Toole  · 5 Mar 2020  · 385pp  · 121,550 words

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us

by Tim O'Reilly  · 9 Oct 2017  · 561pp  · 157,589 words

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are

by Rachel Bloom  · 17 Nov 2020  · 179pp  · 49,805 words

Accelerando

by Stross, Charles  · 22 Jan 2005  · 489pp  · 148,885 words

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari  · 29 Aug 2018  · 389pp  · 119,487 words

Fuller Memorandum

by Stross, Charles  · 14 Jan 2010  · 366pp  · 107,145 words

To Be a Machine: Adventures Among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death

by Mark O'Connell  · 28 Feb 2017  · 252pp  · 79,452 words

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

by James Clear  · 15 Oct 2018  · 301pp  · 78,638 words

Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody

by Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay  · 14 Jul 2020  · 378pp  · 107,957 words

Upgrade

by Blake Crouch  · 6 Jul 2022  · 396pp  · 96,049 words

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner

by Po Bronson  · 14 Jul 2020  · 320pp  · 95,629 words

A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder

by Mark O'Connell  · 27 Jun 2023  · 245pp  · 82,536 words

The Chomsky Reader

by Noam Chomsky  · 11 Sep 1987

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

by Marc Goodman  · 24 Feb 2015  · 677pp  · 206,548 words

Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism and Culture

by Bernardo Kastrup  · 28 May 2015  · 244pp  · 73,966 words

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?

by Aaron Dignan  · 1 Feb 2019  · 309pp  · 81,975 words

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze  · 15 Nov 2021  · 561pp  · 138,158 words

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction

by Adrian Hon  · 5 Oct 2020  · 340pp  · 101,675 words

The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes From an Uncertain Science

by Siddhartha Mukherjee  · 12 Oct 2015  · 52pp  · 16,113 words

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

by David Allen  · 31 Dec 2002  · 300pp  · 79,315 words

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

by Evgeny Morozov  · 16 Nov 2010  · 538pp  · 141,822 words

Aerotropolis

by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay  · 2 Jan 2009  · 603pp  · 182,781 words

Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition

by Kindleberger, Charles P. and Robert Z., Aliber  · 9 Aug 2011

Norco '80: The True Story of the Most Spectacular Bank Robbery in American History

by Peter Houlahan  · 10 Jun 2019

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

by Douglas Rushkoff  · 7 Sep 2022  · 205pp  · 61,903 words

The Evolution of God

by Robert Wright  · 8 Jun 2009

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest

by Edward Chancellor  · 15 Aug 2022  · 829pp  · 187,394 words

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

by Timothy Ferriss  · 6 Dec 2016  · 669pp  · 210,153 words

The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches From the Edge of Life

by The Reluctant Carer  · 22 Jun 2022  · 233pp  · 69,745 words

The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel

by Paige McClanahan  · 17 Jun 2024  · 206pp  · 78,882 words

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

by Scott J. Shapiro  · 523pp  · 154,042 words

Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity

by Charles L. Marohn, Jr.  · 24 Sep 2019  · 242pp  · 71,943 words

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

by Clive Thompson  · 26 Mar 2019  · 499pp  · 144,278 words

The Diet Myth: Why America's Obsessions With Weight Is Hazardous to Your Health

by Paul Campos  · 4 May 2005

Miracle Cure

by William Rosen  · 14 Apr 2017  · 515pp  · 117,501 words

Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin

by Eric Voskuil, James Chiang and Amir Taaki  · 28 Feb 2020  · 365pp  · 56,751 words

The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain

by Daniel Gardner  · 23 Jun 2009  · 542pp  · 132,010 words

Reactive Messaging Patterns With the Actor Model: Applications and Integration in Scala and Akka

by Vaughn Vernon  · 16 Aug 2015

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution

by Marc Weingarten  · 12 Dec 2006  · 363pp  · 123,076 words

QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance (Qi: Book of General Ignorance)

by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson  · 28 Sep 2015  · 432pp  · 85,707 words

The Internet of Money

by Andreas M. Antonopoulos  · 28 Aug 2016  · 200pp  · 47,378 words

The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability

by Lierre Keith  · 30 Apr 2009  · 321pp  · 85,893 words

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

by Matt Ridley  · 17 May 2010  · 462pp  · 150,129 words

Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments

by Michael Batnick  · 21 May 2018  · 198pp  · 53,264 words

Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson (History of Computing)

by Douglas R. Dechow  · 2 Jul 2015  · 223pp  · 52,808 words

Nomad Citizenship: Free-Market Communism and the Slow-Motion General Strike

by Eugene W. Holland  · 1 Jan 2009  · 265pp  · 15,515 words

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-But Some Don't

by Nate Silver  · 31 Aug 2012  · 829pp  · 186,976 words

Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order

by Parag Khanna  · 4 Mar 2008  · 537pp  · 158,544 words

A Man for All Markets

by Edward O. Thorp  · 15 Nov 2016  · 505pp  · 142,118 words

Infinite Detail

by Tim Maughan  · 1 Apr 2019  · 303pp  · 81,071 words

The Choice Factory: 25 Behavioural Biases That Influence What We Buy

by Richard Shotton  · 12 Feb 2018  · 184pp  · 46,395 words

Fantasyland

by Kurt Andersen  · 5 Sep 2017

The Passenger

by The Passenger  · 27 Dec 2021  · 202pp  · 62,397 words

Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets

by Brett Scott  · 4 Jul 2022  · 308pp  · 85,850 words

The Authoritarians

by Robert Altemeyer  · 2 Jan 2007  · 298pp  · 87,023 words

Critical: Science and Stories From the Brink of Human Life

by Matt Morgan  · 29 May 2019  · 218pp  · 70,323 words

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

by Kurt Andersen  · 4 Sep 2017  · 522pp  · 162,310 words

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future

by Alan Weisman  · 21 Apr 2025  · 599pp  · 149,014 words

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

by Rick Perlstein  · 1 Jan 2008  · 1,351pp  · 404,177 words

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk

by Satyajit Das  · 14 Oct 2011  · 741pp  · 179,454 words

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

by Timothy Ferriss  · 1 Dec 2010  · 836pp  · 158,284 words

Curation Nation

by Rosenbaum, Steven  · 27 Jan 2011  · 286pp  · 82,065 words

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland  · 6 May 2019  · 401pp  · 93,256 words

Odd Girl Out: An Autistic Woman in a Neurotypical World

by Laura James  · 5 Apr 2017  · 249pp  · 80,762 words

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe

by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Alex Hyde-White  · 24 Oct 2016  · 515pp  · 142,354 words

The Skeptical Economist: Revealing the Ethics Inside Economics

by Jonathan Aldred  · 1 Jan 2009  · 339pp  · 105,938 words

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney  · 7 Mar 2017  · 526pp  · 160,601 words

Working Identity, Updated Edition, With a New Preface: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career

by Herminia Ibarra  · 17 Oct 2023  · 200pp  · 67,943 words

The Acquirer's Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market

by Tobias E. Carlisle  · 13 Oct 2017  · 120pp  · 33,892 words

Principles of Web API Design: Delivering Value with APIs and Microservices

by James Higginbotham  · 20 Dec 2021  · 283pp  · 78,705 words

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom

by Rebecca MacKinnon  · 31 Jan 2012  · 390pp  · 96,624 words

Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics

by Robert Skidelsky  · 13 Nov 2018

Hidden Figures

by Margot Lee Shetterly  · 11 Aug 2016  · 425pp  · 116,409 words

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It

by Tien Tzuo and Gabe Weisert  · 4 Jun 2018  · 244pp  · 66,977 words

Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything

by Becky Bond and Zack Exley  · 9 Nov 2016  · 227pp  · 71,675 words

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel  · 12 Aug 2020  · 286pp  · 87,168 words

Understanding Power

by Noam Chomsky  · 26 Jul 2010

How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales From the Pentagon

by Rosa Brooks  · 8 Aug 2016  · 548pp  · 147,919 words

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian  · 7 Oct 2024  · 336pp  · 104,899 words

The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working-Class Kids Still Get Working-Class Jobs (Provocations Series)

by James Bloodworth  · 18 May 2016  · 82pp  · 21,414 words

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

by Anna Wiener  · 14 Jan 2020  · 237pp  · 74,109 words

News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World

by Alan Rusbridger  · 26 Nov 2020  · 371pp  · 109,320 words

The Wondering Jew: Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity

by Micah Goodman  · 10 Nov 2020  · 234pp  · 67,917 words

Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global Manhunt

by Steven Johnson  · 11 May 2020  · 299pp  · 79,739 words

Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing

by Ted Conover  · 20 Jan 2010  · 418pp  · 133,703 words

Blue Mars

by Kim Stanley Robinson  · 23 Oct 2010  · 824pp  · 268,880 words

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

by Cary McClelland  · 8 Oct 2018  · 225pp  · 70,241 words

Binge Times: Inside Hollywood's Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix

by Dade Hayes and Dawn Chmielewski  · 18 Apr 2022  · 414pp  · 117,581 words

After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine

by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor  · 14 Jun 2012  · 293pp  · 89,712 words

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

by Thomas E. Ricks  · 30 Jul 2007  · 516pp  · 1,220 words

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara  · 8 Jul 2019

Cuba: An American History

by Ada Ferrer  · 6 Sep 2021  · 723pp  · 211,892 words

A Beautiful Mind

by Sylvia Nasar  · 11 Jun 1998  · 998pp  · 211,235 words

Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith and Love

by Dava Sobel  · 25 May 2009  · 363pp  · 108,670 words

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

by Alec MacGillis  · 16 Mar 2021  · 426pp  · 136,925 words

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider

by Michiko Kakutani  · 20 Feb 2024  · 262pp  · 69,328 words

Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age

by Steven Johnson  · 14 Jul 2012  · 184pp  · 53,625 words

Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day

by Craig Lambert  · 30 Apr 2015  · 229pp  · 72,431 words

Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in an Age of Unreason

by Dave Rubin  · 27 Apr 2020  · 239pp  · 62,005 words

Distrust That Particular Flavor

by William Gibson  · 3 Jan 2012  · 153pp  · 45,871 words

The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

by David Brin  · 1 Jan 1998  · 205pp  · 18,208 words

Madoff: The Final Word

by Richard Behar  · 9 Jul 2024

The Controlled Demolition of the American Empire

by Jeff Berwick and Charlie Robinson  · 14 Apr 2020  · 491pp  · 141,690 words

Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists, the Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All

by Laura Bates  · 2 Sep 2020  · 364pp  · 119,398 words

The Retreat of Western Liberalism

by Edward Luce  · 20 Apr 2017  · 223pp  · 58,732 words

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

by Peter L. Bernstein  · 23 Aug 1996  · 415pp  · 125,089 words

The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician's First Year

by Matt McCarthy  · 6 Apr 2015  · 326pp  · 94,046 words

The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection

by Michael Harris  · 6 Aug 2014  · 259pp  · 73,193 words

Wireless

by Charles Stross  · 7 Jul 2009

The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets

by Simon Singh  · 29 Oct 2013  · 262pp  · 65,959 words

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

by Jon Ronson  · 9 Mar 2015  · 229pp  · 67,869 words

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

by Glenn Greenwald  · 12 May 2014  · 253pp  · 75,772 words

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age

by Steven Levy  · 15 Jan 2002  · 468pp  · 137,055 words

The Ultimate Engineer: The Remarkable Life of NASA's Visionary Leader George M. Low

by Richard Jurek  · 2 Dec 2019  · 431pp  · 118,074 words

Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits

by Kevin Roose  · 18 Feb 2014  · 269pp  · 83,307 words

Growth: A Reckoning

by Daniel Susskind  · 16 Apr 2024  · 358pp  · 109,930 words

The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto

by Benjamin Wallace  · 18 Mar 2025  · 431pp  · 116,274 words

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

by Brian Goldstone  · 25 Mar 2025  · 512pp  · 153,059 words

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power

by Max Chafkin  · 14 Sep 2021  · 524pp  · 130,909 words

Risk: A User's Guide

by Stanley McChrystal and Anna Butrico  · 4 Oct 2021  · 489pp  · 106,008 words

Central America

by Carolyn McCarthy, Greg Benchwick, Joshua Samuel Brown, Alex Egerton, Matthew Firestone, Kevin Raub, Tom Spurling and Lucas Vidgen  · 2 Jan 2001

A People's History of Poverty in America

by Stephen Pimpare  · 11 Nov 2008  · 468pp  · 123,823 words

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

by David F. Swensen  · 8 Aug 2005  · 490pp  · 117,629 words

Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle

by Jeff Flake  · 31 Jul 2017  · 138pp  · 43,748 words

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

by Jessica Bruder  · 18 Sep 2017  · 273pp  · 85,195 words

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America

by Dan Conway  · 8 Sep 2019  · 218pp  · 68,648 words

This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World

by Yancey Strickler  · 29 Oct 2019  · 254pp  · 61,387 words

Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again

by Brittany Kaiser  · 21 Oct 2019  · 391pp  · 123,597 words

The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry

by William K. Black  · 31 Mar 2005  · 432pp  · 127,985 words

Lonely Planet Panama (Travel Guide)

by Lonely Planet and Carolyn McCarthy  · 30 Jun 2013

Free as in Freedom

by Sam Williams  · 16 Nov 2015

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era

by Craig Nelson  · 25 Mar 2014  · 684pp  · 188,584 words

Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss

by Frances Stroh  · 2 May 2016  · 200pp  · 60,314 words

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World

by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott  · 9 May 2016  · 515pp  · 126,820 words

Team Geek

by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman  · 6 Jul 2012  · 209pp  · 54,638 words

A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout

by Carl Safina  · 18 Apr 2011

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work

by Sarah Kessler  · 11 Jun 2018  · 246pp  · 68,392 words

The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class

by Elizabeth Currid-Halkett  · 14 May 2017  · 550pp  · 89,316 words

Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food

by Chase Purdy  · 15 Jun 2020  · 232pp  · 63,803 words

I You We Them

by Dan Gretton

The Rebel and the Kingdom: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime

by Bradley Hope  · 1 Nov 2022  · 257pp  · 77,612 words

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe  · 3 Oct 2022  · 689pp  · 134,457 words

The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-Up in Oakland

by Ali Winston and Darwin Bondgraham  · 10 Jan 2023  · 498pp  · 184,761 words

Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life

by Richard Beck  · 2 Sep 2024  · 715pp  · 212,449 words

The Elements of Marie Curie

by Dava Sobel  · 20 Aug 2024  · 346pp  · 96,466 words

The Quiet Coup: Neoliberalism and the Looting of America

by Mehrsa Baradaran  · 7 May 2024  · 470pp  · 158,007 words

We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent

by Nesrine Malik  · 4 Sep 2019

Driverless Cars: On a Road to Nowhere

by Christian Wolmar  · 18 Jan 2018

The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy...and Get on With Your Life

by Alexander Green  · 15 Sep 2008  · 244pp  · 58,247 words

eBoys

by Randall E. Stross  · 30 Oct 2008  · 381pp  · 112,674 words

The Nanny State Made Me: A Story of Britain and How to Save It

by Stuart Maconie  · 5 Mar 2020  · 300pp  · 106,520 words

Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World

by Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell  · 29 Jul 2019  · 164pp  · 44,947 words

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise

by Eric Ries  · 15 Mar 2017  · 406pp  · 105,602 words

Automating Inequality

by Virginia Eubanks  · 294pp  · 77,356 words

Confidence Game: How a Hedge Fund Manager Called Wall Street's Bluff

by Christine S. Richard  · 26 Apr 2010  · 459pp  · 118,959 words

Fun Inc.

by Tom Chatfield  · 13 Dec 2011  · 266pp  · 67,272 words

In defense of food: an eater's manifesto

by Michael Pollan  · 15 Dec 2008  · 213pp  · 61,911 words

Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order

by Jason Sharman  · 5 Feb 2019  · 265pp  · 71,143 words

The Great Post Office Scandal: The Fight to Expose a Multimillion Pound Scandal Which Put Innocent People in Jail

by Nick Wallis  · 18 Nov 2021  · 705pp  · 192,650 words

The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers

by Emily Levesque  · 3 Aug 2020

Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted

by Daniel Sokatch  · 18 Oct 2021  · 556pp  · 95,955 words

Scotland’s Jesus: The Only Officially Non-Racist Comedian

by Frankie Boyle  · 23 Oct 2013

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life

by George Monbiot  · 13 May 2013  · 424pp  · 122,350 words

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud

by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman  · 17 Jul 2023  · 329pp  · 99,504 words

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)

by Adam Fisher  · 9 Jul 2018  · 611pp  · 188,732 words

On Palestine

by Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappé and Frank Barat  · 18 Mar 2015

Two Nations, Indivisible: A History of Inequality in America: A History of Inequality in America

by Jamie Bronstein  · 29 Oct 2016  · 332pp  · 89,668 words

The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure

by Shawn Micallef  · 10 Jun 2014  · 104pp  · 34,784 words

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister  · 2 Jan 1987  · 261pp  · 16,734 words

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War

by Jeff Sharlet  · 21 Mar 2023  · 308pp  · 97,480 words

Bad Data Handbook

by Q. Ethan McCallum  · 14 Nov 2012  · 398pp  · 86,855 words

Servant Economy: Where America's Elite Is Sending the Middle Class

by Jeff Faux  · 16 May 2012  · 364pp  · 99,613 words

Foundation and Earth

by Isaac Asimov  · 28 Dec 2010

Python for Data Analysis

by Wes McKinney  · 30 Dec 2011  · 752pp  · 131,533 words

Brazillionaires: The Godfathers of Modern Brazil

by Alex Cuadros  · 1 Jun 2016  · 433pp  · 125,031 words

Liar's Poker

by Michael Lewis  · 1 Jan 1989  · 314pp  · 101,452 words

America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism

by Anatol Lieven  · 3 May 2010

Red Plenty

by Francis Spufford  · 1 Jan 2007  · 544pp  · 168,076 words

The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam

by Douglas Murray  · 3 May 2017  · 420pp  · 126,194 words

A United Ireland: Why Unification Is Inevitable and How It Will Come About

by Kevin Meagher  · 15 Nov 2016

Faster, Higher, Farther: How One of the World's Largest Automakers Committed a Massive and Stunning Fraud

by Jack Ewing  · 22 May 2017  · 434pp  · 114,583 words

Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell  · 4 Nov 2014  · 354pp  · 99,690 words

Bike Boom: The Unexpected Resurgence of Cycling

by Carlton Reid  · 14 Jun 2017  · 309pp  · 84,038 words

March of the Lemmings: Brexit in Print and Performance 2016–2019

by Stewart Lee  · 2 Sep 2019  · 382pp  · 117,536 words

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism

by Wendy Liu  · 22 Mar 2020  · 223pp  · 71,414 words

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery

by Andrew Greenway,Ben Terrett,Mike Bracken,Tom Loosemore  · 18 Jun 2018

The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street

by Jonathan A. Knee  · 31 Jul 2006  · 362pp  · 108,359 words

Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden  · 16 Sep 2019  · 324pp  · 106,699 words

Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces

by Radley Balko  · 14 Jun 2013  · 465pp  · 134,575 words

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination

by Adam Lashinsky  · 31 Mar 2017  · 190pp  · 62,941 words

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J. D. Vance  · 27 Jun 2016  · 223pp  · 77,566 words

Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms

by Mark Spitznagel  · 9 Aug 2021  · 231pp  · 64,734 words

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J. B. MacKinnon  · 14 May 2021  · 368pp  · 109,432 words