“This book is about a whole new way of studying the mind . . . an unprecedented peek into people’s psyches . . . Time and again my preconceptions about my country and my species were turned upside-down by Stephens-Davidowitz’s discoveries . . . endlessly fascinating.” — Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature

“Move over Freakonomics. Move over Moneyball. This brilliant book is the best demonstration yet of how big data plus cleverness can illuminate and then move the world. Read it and you’ll see life in a new way.” — Lawrence Summers, President Emeritus and Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University

“Everybody Lies relies on big data to rip the veneer of what we like to think of as our civilized selves. A book that is fascinating, shocking, sometimes horrifying, but above all, revealing.” — Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants

“Brimming with intriguing anecdotes and counterintuitive facts, Stephens-Davidowitz does his level best to help usher in a new age of human understanding, one digital data point at a time.” — Fortune, Best New Business Books

“Freakonomics on steroids―this book shows how big data can give us surprising new answers to important and interesting questions. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz brings data analysis alive in a crisp, witty manner, providing a terrific introduction to how big data is shaping social science.” — Raj Chetty, Professor of Economics at Stanford University

“Everybody Lies is a spirited and enthralling examination of the data of our lives. Drawing on a wide variety of revelatory sources, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz will make you cringe, chuckle, and wince at the people you thought we were.” — Christian Rudder, author of Dataclysm

“A tour de force―a well-written and entertaining journey through big data that, along the way, happens to put forward an important new perspective on human behavior itself. If you want to understand what’s going on in the world, or even with your friends, this is one book you should read cover to cover.” — Peter Orszag, Managing Director, Lazard and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget

“Stephens-Davidowitz, a former data scientist at Google, has spent the last four years poring over Internet search data . . . What he found is that Internet search data might be the Holy Grail when it comes to understanding the true nature of humanity.” — New York Post

“Everybody Lies is an astoundingly clever and mischievous exploration of what big data tells us about everyday life.  Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is as good a data storyteller as I have ever met.” — Steven Levitt, co-author, Freakonomics

“A whirlwind tour of the modern human psyche using search data as its guide. . . . The empirical findings in Everybody Lies are so intriguing that the book would be a page-turner even if it were structured as a mere laundry list.” — The Economist

“Pivotal . . . A book for those who are intensely curious about human nature, informational analysis, and amusing anecdotes to the tune of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakanomics.” — Library Journal

How much sex are people really having? 
How many Americans are actually racist?
Is America experiencing a hidden back-alley abortion crisis?
Can you game the stock market?
Does violent entertainment increase the rate of violent crime?
Do parents treat sons differently from daughters?  
How many people actually read the books they buy?

In this groundbreaking work, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Harvard-trained economist, former Google data scientist, and New York Times writer, argues that much of what we thought about people has been dead wrong. The reason?  People lie, to friends, lovers, doctors, surveys—and themselves.

However, we no longer need to rely on what people tell us. New data from the internet—the traces of information that billions of people leave on Google, social media, dating, and even pornography sites—finally reveals the truth. By analyzing this digital goldmine, we can now learn what people really think, what they really want, and what they really do. Sometimes the new data will make you laugh out loud. Sometimes the new data will shock you.  Sometimes the new data will deeply disturb you.  But, always, this new data will make you think.

Everybody Lies combines the informed analysis of Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, the storytelling of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and the wit and fun of Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics in a book that will change the way you view the world. There is almost no limit to what can be learned about human nature from Big Data—provided, that is, you ask the right questions.