Tom Vanderbilt Book order

Discover why learning is good for us and how to develop a 'Beginner's Mindset'

[A] lively, wide-ranging study... The footnotes have a David Foster Wallace- like wit as Vanderbilt calls our attention to such issues as whether people find donuts less yummy if they taste them in a salmon cannery and whether rats enjoy grape Kool-Aid more if it is infused directly into their stomachs... Convincing... Quite funny... Clear and engaging... He is to be commended for the sheer range of material he makes accessible. - Lisa Zeidner, The Washington Post To answer an age-old question - 'Why do we like the things we like?' - Vanderbilt navigates philosophy, economics, psychology, neurology and data science... As Vanderbilt explores the enigmatic forces driving these decisions, he paints an engaging, multilayered... picture of taste. - Benjamin Leszcz, The Globe and Mail A brave and timely investigation... engulfed as we are by an ocean of science and punditry that presents human behaviour as something that can be codified, predicted and even synthesized. Swimming cheerfully against that tide, Vanderbilt makes a compelling case that most of our choice-making defies those attempts. The nature of taste in fact remains stubbornly mysterious, despite our compulsion to exercise it - and despite how that compulsion increasingly shapes modern life... Clever... Persuasive and personal. There's no judgment here. The author leaves that job to us. - Bruce Philp, National Post Bounces the insights of modern data scientists off the work of generations of critics, economists, neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists. Taste, we learn, is an extremely relative phenomenon currently swerving through an age of extreme relativity... [Vanderbilt's] key takeaway is that taste remains a complex and erratic phenomenon that's endlessly shifting according to environmental, physical, and social pressures... Vanderbilt is a skillful synthesizer, and You May Also Like is full of unexpected connections. - Felix Gillette, Bloomberg A tour through the world of human preferences and the companies that try to divine them... [Vanderbilt is an] amiable and thorough guide to a subject that can get either fussy or murky fairly quickly, and he has an obsessive determination to get to the bottom of something we exercise so often and unthinkingly we tend to take it for granted. - Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review Vanderbilt is an intelligent writer, and there is a lot of interesting material in You May Also Like... Intrepid...Vanderbilt is able to identify two factors that have repeatedly been shown to have a significant influence on taste. One is social consensus; the other is familiarity. We get attracted to things that we see other people are attracted to, and we like things more the longer we like them. - Louis Menand, The New Yorker You May Also Like sets out to understand this mysterious phenomenon of how our preferences change and come to be...the book moves on a whirlwind tour of taste across its many domains, from food and music to color and even cats... [Assembles] a constellation of insights that resonate with one another, each serving to reveal another joint or detail of the bigger picture... Passionate... Enormously refreshing. - Sheena Iyengar, Science Magazine Essential for readers who are interested in getting a glimpse of the decision- making process at influential online media companies, as well as those who are interested in the processes that govern individual preferences and taste making. - Library Journal Entertaining... Extremely convincing... There's much to behold in this exhaustively researched, intellectual assessment of human preference. - Kirkus Reviews An intensive investigation of what we like, why we like it and why sometimes it's so hard to decide... Vanderbilt delivers the explanations with ample documentation and enough humorous asides to make his book deliciously palatable the whole way through. -Sheila M. Trask, BookPage The da

Why does the other lane always seem to be moving faster? Why are people so different inside their cars than they are outside them? Is traffic a microcosm of society, or does the road make its own rules? Traffic speaks volumes: bringing together people from every walk of life. In this hugely enjoyable, curiosity-filled book, Tom Vanderbilt explains why traffic problems are really people problems. Traffic shows that how we behave walking the streets, on our bikes and in our cars is an astonishing cultural indicator; a living, constantly surprising model, what physicists call 'emergent collective behaviour'. Vanderbilt chauffeurs us through why it's so hard to pay attention in traffic, why women cause more congestion than men, what factors make us more likely to honk our horns amongst a host of eye-opening highway conundrums. This book will change the way you view the world and help you better navigate it.

A New York Times Notable Book One of the Best Books of the Year The Washington Post • The Cleveland Plain-Dealer • Rocky Mountain News In this brilliant, lively, and eye-opening investigation, Tom Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are. He demonstrates why plans to protect pedestrians from cars often lead to more accidents. He uncovers who is more likely to honk at whom, and why. He explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our quest for safety, and even identifies the most common mistake drivers make in parking lots. Traffic is about more than driving: it's about human nature. It will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and it may even make us better drivers.

Exploring the evolution of sneakers from basic canvas shoes to high-tech cross-trainers, this book delves into their significance as a cultural phenomenon in America. It highlights the economic and pop cultural influences that have shaped sneakers into a beloved footwear choice. Featuring 40 illustrations, it offers an engaging and informative perspective on these iconic shoes within the context of consumer goods.