The Gambling Animal

Reviews / Votes

A fascinating tour of risk taking in the natural world, from surviving to socialising -- Adam Kucharski, author of THE PERFECT BET A complex, closely argued exposition of their risk and reward work with humans and elephants, tracing how humans evolved to manage risk, from the savannah to Wall Street -- Simon Ings * New Scientist * Offering an unsettling account of human exceptionalism ... their fascinating and challenging work explains how the secrets to human success may be our downfall -- Marc Bekoff, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado * Psychology Today * In their natural history of risk management, from prehistory to today, economists Glenn Harrison and Don Ross discuss their team's experiments on risk-taking in some 40,000 volunteers from around the world, who had varying levels of wealth, income and education, as well as 6 elephants in South Africa -- Andrew Robinson, Best Science Picks * Nature * Weaves together insights from economics and evolutionary science to paint a persuasive picture of how humans' social brains have given us a uniquely powerful but dangerously flawed type of intelligence -- Diane Coyle, author of COGS & MONSTERS A masterful integration of scientific insights on the human path to ecological domination. Behavioral economics at its best -- George Ainslie, author of BREAKDOWN OF WILL A ground-breaking exploration of humanity's unique relationship with risk and reward, offering a revolutionary glimpse into the evolutionary patterns of humanity -- John A. List, author of THE VOLTAGE EFFECT This valuable and highly enjoyable book offers a fresh perspective: human evolution as a story of collective risk management. The Gambling Animal takes us on a tour through the gambles of life, from the survival struggles of early hominids to our high-stakes wager on climate change -- Gerd Gigerenzer, director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development A sweeping and page-turning story of how humans - and other animals - manage the myriad risks that continually face us. The authors make a compelling case that the management of risk shapes whether we flourish (or perish) both as individuals, and as a species. -- Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School and author of The Mind is Flat Praise for Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalised (with James Ladyman) -- : A book can be important, although its main claims seem to the reader to be as controversial at the end of the book as they were at the beginning ... So it is with Every Thing Must Go ... An enticing work -- Jeremy Butterfield * TLS * Ross's broadside against traditional analytic metaphysics embodies the most admirable characteristics of a good slap across the face: it is forceful, frank, and delivered in response to sufficient provocation -- P. Kyle Stanford, author of Exceeding Our Grasp Probes humans' relationship with risk, positing that our ability to take risks helped us to evolve into sophisticated beings - unique among animals * The Actuary *