Up until the last chapter, I was planning to rate Algorithms to Live By at three out of five stars. The book is filled with poignant descriptions of algorithmic devices that we (mostly unknowingly) use in everyday life, and the explanations are simple enough to be understood by any layperson. Unfortunately the first half of the book put a bad taste in my mouth with its "by male redditors, for male redditors" tone, but the last 50ish pages on game theory, mechanism design (i.e. "reverse game theory" ), information cascades, Vickrey auctions, and the revelation principle really blew me away. The well-developed conclusion claims that even though we all want to escape the brutal rat race wherein folks take advantage of others at every turn, there is still hope. We can still change many aspects of the game to transform the dominant strategy into one that is based on honesty. I'm super glad I didn't throw this in the DNF pile.