All of the essays in this new collection by Thomas Schelling convey his unique perspective on individuals and society. This perspective has several characteristics: it is strategic in that it assumes that an important part of people's behavior is motivated by the thought of influencing other people's expectations; it views the mind as being separable into two or more parts (rational/irrational; present-minded/future-minded); it is motivated by policy concerns—smoking and other addictions, global warming, segregation, nuclear war; and while it accepts many of the basic assumptions of economics—that people are forward-looking, rational decision makers, that resources are scarce, and that incentives are important—it is open to modifying them when appropriate, and open to the findings and insights of other social science disciplines.
Schelling—a 2005 Nobel Prize winner— has been one of the four or five most important social scientists of the past fifty years, and this collection shows why.