Book cover of Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

Book description

'A breakthrough book. Wonderfully applicable to everything in life, and funny as hell.' Nassim Nicholas Taleb

To be brilliant, you have to be irrational

Why is Red Bull so popular - even though everyone hates the taste? Why do countdown boards on platforms take away the pain of train delays?…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Alchemy as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book made me laugh out loud with its very familiar examples — and then question every policy meeting, academic review, and "strategic plan" I’ve ever sat through. I wish the folks in our last management and finance meeting had read this!! Rory Sutherland’s Alchemy is a riotous, gloriously unhinged plea for embracing the messy, illogical, instinctive parts of ourselves when trying to solve problems. His argument? Logic is important but overrated, spreadsheets lie, and sometimes the most effective solutions come from a place closer to gut instinct than peer-reviewed evidence. Rationality needs to be balanced with creativity!

What I…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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