The Art of Strategy

Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff treat game theory as disciplined strategic thinking: anticipating an opponent's next move while knowing the rival is doing the same. Some of the theory amounts to common sense, the authors acknowledge, but much of it runs against intuition and takes a new way of seeing to master. Their case studies come from television, movies, sports, politics, history and wider pop culture, and they use them to show a game-theory element in nearly every business and personal interaction. Along the way they consider whether reality-TV winners are instinctive game theorists, whether big investors spot what most people overlook, and what strong poker players understand.

Kimberly Gloria Choi, founder of Marchbaby Collective, said she was curious how strategy applies across industries and wanted to learn whether she had been played by such tactics as a consumer.