The Week asked Columbia University business professors Sheena Iyengar, the author of the The Art of Choosing (Twelve, $26), a new book examining the science of how human beings make choices, to name six titles that have influenced her work. It was ‘a complex choosing task,' she says.
Essays: First Series by Ralph Waldo Emerson (General Books, $7). Inspiring, invigorating, brimming with commitment. “Self-Reliance,” in particular, is notable for its powerful argument against conformity, against “a foolish consistency.” It’s hard to imagine what “American values” would look like without Emerson.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Scholastic, $4). The Hatter emphasizes the difference between “I like what I get” and “I get what I like.” The Cheshire Cat suggests that if you don’t know where you want to go, it doesn’t matter which path you choose. This book is sometimes considered wonderful nonsense, but the characters say a lot of wise things about our desires, goals, and achievements.
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The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner (Simon & Schuster, $18). A classic that manages to make economics accessible and interesting to the layperson. Heilbroner delves into the “lives, times, and ideas of the great economic thinkers”—as the book’s subtitle promises—to show how men like Adam Smith and Karl Marx were shaped by their choices, and how their theories continue to shape us today.
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Random House, $16). Rushdie’s novel is a beautiful, astonishing meditation on freedom, destiny, and the role of the individual in creating history. What do we expect from freedom, and what do we get? Can one person’s choices affect the course of an entire nation? Rushdie makes these questions impossible to ignore.
—Sheena Iyengar, a Columbia University business professor, explores the biology and psychology of choice in The Art of Choosing
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