The Wisdom of Crowds

Title: The Wisdom of Crowds
Book author: James Surowiecki
Genre: Factual/decision making
Readability: OK – although slightly long towards the end

The basic idea of this book is that groups of people often make better decisions than individuals, even if these individuals are experts. Surowiecki makes his argument with a number of different examples, from democracy to the stock market. He also explains the instances where group decision-making processes go wrong, and what can be done to ameliorate them.

The Wisdom of Crowds is well argued and solidly based in science. It has a slight academic bent, which can make a few of the later chapters somewhat heavy to get through, but most of the book is quite readable. Should be of significant interest to people who are interested in political science, in the stock market, or in similar cases of collective decision making.