The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

23rd March, 2009 No Comments

What a paradox this book was–to fight through and finish or to just put it aside. The Paradox of Choice might have been one of the driest books I’ve read in quite a while. When I was little, my mom would occasionally put me in the car seat and let the engine run a bit so that the vibrations would put me to sleep. To this day staying awake in a moving vehicle is rather difficult. Combine the subway with a dull book and you get a powerful combination to knock Christina out for a short nap. Interestingly, author Barry Schwartz makes reference to this conundrum of finishing a book simply because of the time already invested in reading it.

The thing is, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Lessis well written and about a subject I find fascinating–if we crave freedom, autonomy, and options, why is it that the abundance of choices we have available makes us so indecisive and stressed? It focuses on the idea that in modern American society the smallest choices have taken on the magnitude of large choices. Somewhere along the way, picking out a smart phone became as difficult as choosing a medical treatment for a life threatening illness. We now ask people to be an expert in every subject because no one is going to guide us and make decisions for us anymore.

Schwartz is a professor and his writing makes me think of grant writing–persuasive and authoritative–but with reverse Thesaurus use. Unlike the high school student hoping to sound smarter with big words, the book seems to be dumbed down for the lay person. He started off strong, taking the reader through a trip to his local grocery store and counting the varieties of cookies and other packaged goods that litter the shelves only to lose me after a few chapters.

The plethora of choices available to us in today’s society leaves much room for doubting our decisions. I am curious as to whether or not Schwartz debated time and time again what approach to take, what order to organize the material in, and what voice to take. The case studies included are interesting and summarized. For a book discussing the problems of so much choice, Schwartz does a good job keeping the number of case studies few and referring back to them rather than introducing new data and keeps the book to a reasonable length rather than dragging it out with inclusion upon inclusion.

With countless non-fiction books dealing with their subject matter in a similar manner–informative, but simplified–many are more engaging, more interesting. Schwartz may be very knowledgeable about the subject material and very intelligent, but he is not the kind of writer who makes you curious and desirous to read more. In a world filled with choices, I would suggest other books before The Paradox of Choice unless you happened to be wildly interested in psychology.

Related posts:

1. The Melting Season by Jami Attenberg When she heard that I was reading this book, a friend...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.