Customer Reviews
Well worth reading - By: R. Sands, 12 Jul 2007 
I see this book hasn't been reviewed on Amazon for more than 5 years, so the comments need an update. I recommend anyone browsing here to give the book a try. I don't agree with previous reviewers that the ideasin this book are superficial: Rather they are so fundamental to the way the world works that the examples appear self evident when the author raises them. Why not decide for yourself? It's very readable, whether or not you finde it also thought provoking.
An optimist's sociological musings - By: , 08 Oct 2000 
A few years ago, with "Moral Animal" Robert Wright caused a complete turnaroundin my recreational reading habits from mostly fiction to mostly nonfiction. His style was easy & stimulating & generated a new interestin evolutionary sciencein general & evolutionary psychologyin particular, and, perhaps with most consequence, introduced me to the current rennaisancein popular science writing. It was therefore with a keen sense of anticipation that I picked up a copy of his latest, "Nonzero".
The book is writtenin two parts, the first sociologicalin orientation & the second biological, & finishes up with a few guesses as to the future of mankind. The basic topic is a game-theoretical take on the positive consequences of mutually self-interested cooperation, which the author enshrinesin the unfortunately ugly phrase "nonzero-summness". In a defensively apologetic appendix, Wright confesses he wanted to use this as the title. I'm glad he didn't.
The phrase "zero sum" isin fairly common usein the US, although I have not heard it muchin Europe; it means an interaction where there is no overall, net gain for the parties concerned. A boxing match is a zero sum game, one man wins, another loses. In contrast, Wright's interest isin interactions whose results are positive for all parties, generating "progress". Examples are easy - consider the organisation between different people with different expertise it takes to, say, build a house.
In a necessarily thin history of the human race, Wright finds this nonzero-summness wherever he looks, elevating it, more or less, to the level of an over-arching principle of the development of life and, inevitably, the development of human society.
There is a great deal of high talk, provocative nudges, & suggestions of the perception of higher things. But Wright never seems to bite the bullet & take a controversial stance, preferring to adopt a generally optimistic attitude, rather like Rodin's thinker, looking upward, with a goofy smile on his face - cute, perhaps, but not nearly so interesting. The result is a vague sort of impression that because things have gone wellin the past, Wright thinks it likely, possibly even (but not explicitly) necessary, that they will continue to go wellin the future. (Perhaps only a modern American, even a Californian, could have written this book.)
A brief duel near the middle of the book with Popper's ideas on the inability of historical studies to predict future developments is unconvincing. Popper was surely discussing something considerably more refined than Wright's generalist approach - after all, one buys into mutual funds which have performed wellin the past on the odds that they will continue to do so, but this still does not mean that the behaviour of the stock exchange is predictable.
This is an optimist's sociology book - read it for a nice, warm & fuzzy feel of an idea of the universe as a place built for progress, but don't expect any paradigm-changing revelations. Overall, I rate it an interesting read, but ultimately dissappointing.
