Books like The Enigma of Reason

01

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

02

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

The Righteous Mind is Jonathan Haidt's argument that moral reasoning is not the source of our moral judgments — it's the press secretary for them.

A kindred psychology read.

03

The Art of Thinking Clearly

Rolf Dobelli · Psychology

Rolf Dobelli is a Swiss entrepreneur and novelist who wrote a series of short newspaper columns on cognitive biases, later collected and expanded into this book.

Shares reasoning and cognitive bias with The Enigma of Reason.

04

You Are Not So Smart

David McRaney · Psychology

David McRaney is a journalist who started a blog called "You Are Not So Smart" about self-delusion in 2009, and turned it into this book in 2011.

Shares reasoning and cognitive bias with The Enigma of Reason.

05

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain

David Eagleman · Psychology

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford who argues that the conscious self is a late, small, and largely uninformed participant in the brain's activity.

A kindred psychology read.

06

A Rulebook for Arguments

Anthony Weston · Philosophy

A Rulebook for Arguments is Anthony Weston's slim, widely assigned handbook on how to build and judge arguments.

Shares reasoning and argumentation with The Enigma of Reason.

07

Expert Political Judgment

Philip Tetlock · Psychology

Expert Political Judgment is Philip Tetlock's report on a twenty-year study of political forecasters.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

08

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

09

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry

Randolph M. Nesse · Psychology

Randolph Nesse spent forty years as a psychiatrist and evolutionary biologist asking a question most of his colleagues found strange: why did natural selection leave us so vulnerable to anxiety, depression, and other forms of suffering?

Both dig into evolutionary psychology.

10

Irrationality

Stuart Sutherland · Psychology

Irrationality is Stuart Sutherland's rigorous and often mordant survey of the ways human beings consistently fail to reason well.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

11

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky · Psychology

Judgment Under Uncertainty is the academic anthology that launched a research program.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

12

Mind Over Money

Claudia Hammond · Psychology

Mind Over Money is Claudia Hammond's survey of the research on how people actually think about, feel about, and make decisions with money — which turns out to be considerably less rational than economic theory assumes.

Both dig into cognitive bias.