Book #50: Everything is Obvious Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J. Watts

Tommy sent me a list of books that the RAND faculty (apparently they also have a RAND grad school, which is strange to me since it's not associated with an actual university) compiled, called "Books that will change the way you think." Some of them looked more interesting than others, and this one looked the most interesting of all. I checked it out from the library here in SM and have been reading through it. It seems to me like the author is responding to some of Malcolm Gladwell's books and theories (he references Gladwell a lot, and is always disagreeing with him) and is pretty much making the point that the way we think about things, our common sense ideas about how things work, is generally wrong. He says again and again that we cannot rely on common sense to make big, public policy decisions, because common sense works well in everyday decisions that rule our personal lives, but it's not applicable on a global or governmental scale. And I'm pretty sure he's right, if that makes him feel any better. The funny and ironic thing is that Malcolm Gladwell markets his ideas as being totally against our normal ideas of common sense, and this guy is writing about them as if they ARE common sense and he's the one giving us the new, outlandish ideas.

The only thing about this book is that it's really not as engaging as other nonfiction books that I've read similar to this. The Tipping Point and Freakonomics are story-centered--they draw principles from specific people and experiments and are generally pretty narrative-based, which makes them incredibly interesting. This book is much more dry and not as focused on examples, which just means it's harder to get through and is probably why it's not as popular as Freakonomics was. All in all, a good read, but not one I'll be recommending to everyone I meet.

Also, this is my fiftieth book this year--halfway to my goal of 100! And it's only mid-August... haha I haven't read as much as I'd planned this summer. I've done much, much more than I'd planned, except for the reading. But I think I can still make it, depending on how crazy things are post-baby.