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  • The Wisdom of Crowds

  • Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
  • Written by: James Surowiecki
  • Narrated by: Erik Singer
  • Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins

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The Wisdom of Crowds

Written by: James Surowiecki
Narrated by: Erik Singer
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Publisher's Summary

In this endlessly fascinating book, New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea that has profound implications: large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant. Groups are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.  

This seemingly counterintuitive notion has endless and major ramifications for how businesses operate, how knowledge is advanced, how economies are (or should be) organized and how we live our daily lives. With seemingly boundless erudition and in delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, economic behaviorism, artificial intelligence, military history, and political theory to show just how this principle operates in the real world.

Despite the sophistication of his arguments, Surowiecki presents them in a wonderfully entertaining manner. The examples he uses are all down-to-earth, surprising, and fun to ponder. Why is the line in which you're standing always the longest? Why is it that you can buy a screw anywhere in the world and it will fit a bolt bought ten-thousand miles away? Why is network television so awful? If you had to meet someone in Paris on a specific day but had no way of contacting them, when and where would you meet? Why are there traffic jams? What's the best way to win money on a game show? Why, when you walk into a convenience store at 2:00 A.M. to buy a quart of orange juice, is it there waiting for you? What do Hollywood mafia movies have to teach us about why corporations exist?

The Wisdom of Crowds is a brilliant but accessible biography of an idea, one with important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, conduct our business, and think about our world. 

©2004 James Surowiecki (P)2004 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a division of Random House, Inc.

Why We Think It's Essential: James Surowiecki offers an interesting theory: that answers to difficult questions are best reached by a group of alert, intelligent individuals rather than by single, even respected, experts alone. The author highlights tragedies that could have been avoided had a greater number of persons been consulted before crucial decisions were made. Veteran narrator Grover Gardner does a fine job engaging the listener with Surowiecki's extended case studies. --Corey Thrasher

Critic Reviews

"Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory." (Publishers Weekly)

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