The Undoing Project
Lewis tells the story of Kahneman and Tversky's extraordinary intellectual partnership — the friendship that created behavioral economics. A biography of ideas: how two Israeli psychologists overturned the foundations of economics by proving that human judgment is systematically wrong. Lewis's most personal book, and the origin story behind the science that changed investing forever.
The book can't decide if it's a biography or a science explainer, and readers feel it never fully commits to either, calling it neither “a biographical appreciation or an explanation of their theories.” It opens with an extended detour into Houston Rockets basketball analytics before Kahneman or Tversky ever appear on the page, which strikes some readers as a disorienting start. Multiple readers say the biographical material about the two men's on-and-off partnership crowds out the actual research findings, and recommend going straight to “the scientist himself in Thinking, Fast and Slow” instead. A critic makes the same point more formally: “details about the unlikely coupling overwhelm the larger narrative.” Some readers push back on how the friendship gets framed too, calling the treatment overstated, and admit long stretches genuinely “require all your concentration to not zone out.”
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
