Nudge
"Nudge: Improving Decision About Health, Wealth and Happiness" by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein is a fun and easy to read book about surprisingly serious topics. It comes highly recommended by a multitude of different people and sources, not the least my dear The Economist gave it their "A Best Book of the Year"-award/badge/thing.
The subtitle might suggest that the book is a self-help book but that is (mostly) not the case. The book talks about the choices we make but often from a grander perspective of creating useful default choices and making it easy to do the right thing, wether when choosing food or pension plans. Much of the advice goes to the "choice architects", the people who decide in what order things are presented etc. However, it does also empowers the reader to recognize where those choices have been made badly for you, either in ignorance or for deception, and helps us make a more conscious choice where we deem it important. The writers are both professors at the University of Chicago (School of Business and Law, respectively). There are copious amounts of references and notes in the end, which always is a good sign. The book itself is also very facts-based, it references much research and doesn't claim to come up with much own ideas just collecting the wisdom of others (again, something that I find both refreshing and honest). Lots of books like these are written to bang on the authors own drum and support their pet-theory. It follows the tradition of books like Freakonomics and writers like Malcolm Gladwell in making real world economics and psychology easy and fun to read. For people who enjoy learning and understanding about how the world works this is really something you need to read. Even more than most other books in this field, "Nudge" feels practical and more real than many other books in the same vein. Especially people in the position of making choices for other people, either explicitly or implicitly in designing a form or plan, need to know how important the way in which the alternatives are presented is! People are lazy or get paralyzed when the complexity or amount of choices is too much for them and you need to help them make a good choice. If there is any criticism to be pointed out it is that the book is very US-centric and some of the discussions about 401(k)'s and other strictly American idiosyncrasies can feel uninteresting for an outsider but that is both understandable (since the authors are from the US) and isn't overwhelming. All in all, I highly recommend "Nudge" for being an interesting, educational and fun read!
