A REASON TO HOPE - REVIEW OF CHARLES DUHIGG'S "THE POWER OF HABIT"

I can't stand Malcolm Gladwell's books. I have tried reading The Tipping Point (2000), Outliers (2008) and Blink (2005) but couldn't finish the books. No doubt they talk about important topics (the "tipping point" analogy crops up in a number of places) but somehow they don't gel with me. Probably because they refer a lot to sociology literature and I am not familiar with that area.

IN TWO MINDS – REVIEW OF DANIEL KAHNEMAN’S “THINKING, FAST AND SLOW”

Having been influenced by the great Richard Feynman’s talks, I used to look upon psychologists with a certain disdain. Looking back, I think Feynman’s dislike of psychologists stemmed from the fact that they often tend to concentrate on the abnormal mind: hence such oddities like “Oedipus complex” and “Electra complex”.

IRRATIONALLY YOURS – REVIEW OF DAN ARIELY’S “PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL”

Two thousand years ago Aristotle stated, “Man is a rational animal”, to differentiate him from other animals who relied on instincts. In my college days, for a while I was hooked on rationality under the influence of Ayn Rand. I used to think that every action and every opinion should be rationally evaluated and life should be conducted with reason as the measure of virtue.