Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

Soccernomics

Simon Kuper, Stefan Szymanski · 448 pages

Using insights and analogies from economics, statistics, psychology, and business to cast a new and entertaining light on how the game of soccer works, "Soccernomics" reveals the often surprisingly counterintuitive truths about the world's most popular game. An essential guide for the 2010 World Cup.

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · 320 pages

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner · 320 pages

*A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything* Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? How did the legalization of abortion affect the rate of violent crime? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask. But

The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong

Chris Anderson, David Sally · 392 pages

Moneyball meets Freakonomics in this myth-busting guide to understanding and winning the most popular sport on the planet. Innovation is coming to soccer, and at the center of it all are the numbers -- a way of thinking about the game that ignores the obvious in favor of how things actually are. In The Numbers Game, Chris Anderson, a former professional goalkeeper turned soccer statistics guru, te

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success

Matthew Syed · 312 pages

In this thoughtful, provocative book, a former Olympian persuasively demonstrates how sports offer powerful and often overlooked tools with which to explore fundamental subjects, including biology, morality, globalization, culture, gender, race, and economics.

Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir · 304 pages

An examination of how scarcity--and our flawed responses to it--shapes our lives, our society, and our culture.

The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and The Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life

Uri Gneezy, John List · 288 pages

A colorful examination of why people do what they do--observed through the lens of incentives that can spur people to achieve--as reviewed by two superstars revolutionizing economics.

The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

Steven Kotler · 234 pages

"An exploration of how extreme athletes are able to break the limits of ultimate human performance and what we can learn from their mastery of the state of consciousness known as "flow." "--

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Michael Lewis · 318 pages

"This delightfully written, lesson-laden book deserves a place of its own in the Baseball Hall of Fame." ―Forbes Moneyball is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis follows the low-budget Oakland A's, visionary general manager Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur basebal

The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

W. Timothy Gallwey · 141 pages

Concentrates upon overcoming mental attitudes that adversely affect tennis performance, including learning to relax, effectively concentrating, and discarding bad habits.

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone - Especially Ourselves

Dan Ariely · 285 pages

The author, a behavioral economist challenges our preconceptions about dishonesty; we all cheat, whether it is copying a paper in the classroom, or white lies on our expense accounts. He explores how unethical behavior works in the personal, professional, and political worlds, and how it affects all of use, even as we think of ourselves as having high moral standards. He explores the question of d

The Formula: How Rogues, Geniuses, and Speed Freaks Reengineered F1 into the World's Fastest-Growing Sport―A High-Octane History of Formula 1's Rise in America, Racing Culture, and Engineering Marvels

Joshua Robinson · 304 pages

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 400 pages

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · 499 pages

In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, th

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction

Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner · 352 pages

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week’s meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts’ predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value

William Poundstone · 336 pages

Examines how "price consultants" and retailers convince consumers to pay more for less, and how negotiation coaches offer similar advice for businesspeople cutting deals Prices are a collective hallucination. Here, author William Poundstone reveals the hidden psychology of value. In psychological experiments, people are unable to estimate "fair" prices accurately and are strongly influenced by th

How Bad Do You Want It?: Mastering the Psychology of Mind Over Muscle

Matt Fitzgerald · 301 pages

"Fitzgerald puts you into the pulse-pounding action of more than a dozen epic races from running, cycling, triathlon, XTERRA, and rowing with thrilling race reports and revealing post-race interviews with the elites. Their own words reinforce what the research has found: strong mental fitness lets us approach our true physical limits, giving us an edge over physically stronger competitors. Each ch

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Joshua Foer · 307 pages

The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory “Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker “Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —The Boston Globe An instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlo

The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch

Jonathan Gottschall · 296 pages

"When a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym moves in across the street from his office, Jonathan Gottschall sees a challenge, and an opportunity. Pushing forty, out of shape, and disenchanted with his job as an adjunct English professor, part of him yearns to cross the street and join up. The other part is terrified. Gottschall eventually works up his nerve, and starts training for a real cage fight. He'

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Richard H. Thaler, Cass R. Sunstein · 312 pages

Thaler and Sunstein develop libertarian paternalism as a middle path between command-and-control and strict-neutrality choice architectures. Libertarian paternalism protects humans against their damaging psychological traits (inertia, bounded rationality, undue influence) by exploiting those habits to nudge people into making better choices.

Happiness: Lessons From A New Science

Richard Layard · 320 pages

The Art of Choosing

Sheena Iyengar · 329 pages

Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Ori Brafman, Rom Brafman · 206 pages

Why are we more likely to fall in love when we feel in danger? Why would an experienced pilot disregard his training and the rules of the aviation industry, leading to the deadliest airline crash in history? This book lets you discover the answers.