Amazon.com: The Era of Choice: The Ability to Choose and Its Transformation of Contemporary Life (Bradford Books) (9780262182485): Edward C. Rosenthal: Books
Silver Award Winner for Philosophy in the 2005 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards
Today most of us are awash with choices. The cornucopia of material goods available to those of us in the developed world can turn each of us into a kid in a candy store; but our delight at picking the prize is undercut by our regret at lost opportunities. And what's the criterion for choosing anything—material, spiritual, the path taken or not taken—when we have lost our faith in everything? In The Era of Choice Edward Rosenthal argues that choice, and having to make choices, has become the most important influence in both our personal lives and our cultural expression. Choice, he claims, has transformed how we live, how we think, and who we are.
This transformation began in the nineteenth century, catalyzed by the growing prosperity of the Industrial Age and a diminishing faith in moral and scientific absolutes. The multiplicity of choices forces us to form oppositions; this, says Rosenthal, has spawned a keen interest in dualism, dilemmas, contradictions, and paradoxes. In response, we have developed mechanisms to hedge, compromise, and to synthesize. Rosenthal looks at the scientific and philosophical theories and cultural movements that choice has influenced—from physics (for example, Niels Bohr's theory that light is both particle and wave) to postmodernism, from Disney trailers to multiculturalism. He also reveals the effect of choice on the personal level, where we grapple with decisions that range from which wine to have with dinner to whether to marry or divorce, as we hurtle through lives of instant gratification, accelerated consumption, trend, change, and speed. But we have discovered, writes Rosenthal, that sometimes, we can have our cake and eat it, too.
"This is an extremely readable cautionary tale about the 'vicious spiral of choice,' of how unresolved dualisms have informed modern life. . . . Rosenthal is a wonderful guide to intellectually demanding material." — Publishers Weekly
"Once men and women had hardly any choices in life, and now there are so many that choice itself has become a source of anxiety. Switch off your 500 cable channels and read Edward Rosenthal's important new book." —Gregg Easterbrook, author of The Progress Paradox
"Insightful and broad-ranging ruminations on the ever-increasing array of choices we face. As Rosenthal ably demonstrates, these options play a surprisingly pervasive role in shaping our psyches, our economy, and our culture." —John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper
"Edward Rosenthal makes a challenging argument that the hallmark of modernity is that 'choice' has been extended to every corner of our lives—the material, the social, the cultural, the conceptual, and the moral. To make his case, he discusses ... everything! There is an idea or an observation worth thinking about on every page of this extraordinary book." —Barry Schwartz, Dorwin Cartwright Professor of Social Theory and Social Action, Swarthmore College, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
"The Era of Choice sheds light on a central dilemma of our time. In an era when we are freer to choose than ever, we are increasingly overwhelmed by our choices. Edward Rosenthal brings his prodigious knowledge of philosophy, social theory, and history to help us better understand how we got to this point and where we might go from here." —Richard Florida, Hirst Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, author of The Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class
If you're here, obviously you wanted to find out more about me or about my books. So, here's some personal stuff: I was born in Manhattan and attended Stuyvesant High School. Like many kids there, I loved math and science - and everything else, except maybe for diagramming sentences in English class. (But don't let that fool you - I always loved to write, and even wrote a suspense thriller when I was 10. That one, though, you won't find on Amazon.)
I went on to study mathematics, physics, computer science, and philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. I majored in mathematics and made computer science my official minor.
In college I realized that I wanted to become a professor. I was warned that you either publish or perish - and it's true - but where else do you get paid to learn about cool stuff all day long, solve problems, write articles, and teach people too! So I went off to graduate school at Northwestern University to study optimization and theoretical computer science.
Along the way I fell in love with game theory and wrote my Ph.D. thesis on cooperative (cost sharing) games that arise from network optimization problems. Since then I've taught management science and operations management at Temple University. This has worked out great for me, because Temple is a buzzing and vibrant urban campus in a city (Philadelphia, in case you are from the Left Coast) that is definitely on the rise.
One idea that has totally captivated me since I was 19 years old is that nowadays, people have way, way more choice in their lives than they ever had before. You can choose your career, choose your companions, choose your dinner . . . all of which were very difficult to do, say, 100 years ago, not to mention 1,000 years ago. The question is, how does this ability to choose so many things in our lives impact the way we live and think?
This fascination with choice led me to write my first book, The Era of Choice: The Ability to Choose and its Transformation of Contemporary Life, which was published by MIT Press in 2005. In the book I show that the way we think about things - not just everyday stuff, but cultural and intellectual ideas too - has been utterly transformed by the wealth of choices in our lives. Many of the changes are wonderful, but sometimes, people really think they can have their cake and eat it too, and this can set us up for some major disappointment.
Since writing The Era of Choice I've watched our world continue to change at warp speed: for example, in just these last half-dozen years, most of us over the age of 12 have become reduced to being slightly bent over all the time, peering down at small digital devices that we clutch desperately. How could we have such wide-ranging choice in our lives, and yet end up captive to these things 24/7? Sounds like another book in the making.
My other longtime fascination has been with decision making. How can we figure out the best decisions? Why do we end up making the decisions that we do? What role does randomness play? How often do our emotions tangle with our higher-order, "rational" cogitation? Do our decisions clash with those of others?
If these questions fascinate you as well, then maybe you need to discover your inner game theorist. By chance, as it turns out, I had the wonderful opportunity recently to write The Complete Idiot's Guide to Game Theory.
What's game theory about? One angle on it, as I mention in the Complete Idiot's Guide, is that it's about competition, money, and guile. But more precisely, game theory is a mathematical approach to decision making in the presence of conflict and uncertainty. Simply put: how can you make the best decision you can, when (1.) others may be working against you, and (2.) you're not sure what's going to happen next?
In a nutshell, that's what game theory is about. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Game Theory is a serious and comprehensive book that surveys this broad subject. If you check out the "Look Inside" feature for my book on Amazon.com, you'll not only find the Table of Contents but you'll also get a good idea of my writing style and the book's level of difficulty.
About that: if you are a Ph.D. student in economics, the CIG to Game Theory will be a fun and informative read but it won't help you with the starred problems you have to do for homework. But the CIG isn't a Ph.D. level book, is it?
For the rest of us, the CIG to Game Theory is a solid introduction. You will learn some concrete techniques, from solving nonzero sum games to cooperative game solutions to auction strategy. You'll also get an introduction to a wide range of topics, from adverse selection to the role of information to repeated games, even to more specialized topics such as mechanism design. And, in addition to learning the theory - how people should act in these situations - you'll learn how people actually behave. An entire section of the book is devoted to behavioral games, far exceeding what you'd learn in competing titles.
Finally, the key thing is this: I make sure, I really do, that everybody can do the math.
This review is from: The Era of Choice: The Ability to Choose and Its Transformation of Contemporary Life (Bradford Books) (Hardcover)
Where, I have often wondered, is the man for all seasons? In Edward Rosenthal, we appear to have found one of the last of this endangered species, an intellectual globe-trotter who shares his delightful insights on one of the biggest meta-themes of the new century: choice and its profound impact on our lives.
You might expect that a topic that sounds as dull and dry as "choice" would fail to engage all but the most philosophically minded. I was surprised to find that the book is fun and very readable. Rosenthal uses his engaging style, a wealth of examples, and his wide-ranging knowledge of physics, philosophy, and history to keep us interested.
Rosenthal points out some things about Choice that you know, others that are under your nose but that you do not notice, and yet others that you almost certainly do not know about. Among the most fascinating connections are those in physics, linguistics, and philosophy. Even if your interest is mild, you are drawn in by the fascinating nexus, by the realization that many of the most profound and mundane aspects and actions of our modern life are connected by this duality - of choosing and choice.
If you liked Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", Douglas Hofstadter's "Godel,Escher, Bach", or Stephen Pinker's "The language Instinct", you will enjoy this book. If you fit the profile, I suggest that you spend a languorous weekend sampling from this smorgasbord of very accessible intellectual delicacies. Of course, if you don't want to, its entirely your.....
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I picked up this book thinking that it would be like "Blink" or "Influence" - i.e., full of anecdotes and interesting studies. Instead, the book is mainly a long and rambling discussion with absolutely nothing insightful to add.
Don't even think about reading it, let alone buying it. It's a terrible choice to make :-)
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