Product Description
This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources-psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 9 reviews)

More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences by James East (Orlando, FL)

4 Stars
August 27, 2009
As the title suggests, this book is an expanded and revised edition. As a non-professional and autodidact in the field of social sciences, I too find this book a gem as the other reviewers have so indicated. The book is divided into five (5) sections: 1) Explanations and Mechanisms 2) The Mind 3) Action 4) Lessons From The Natural Sciences 5) Interaction Sections 2-5 are must reads if you are into the social sciences, but I found the first Section on Explanations and Mechanisms just a skosh on the highbrow side. However, we are talking about someone that has spent over 40 years on his work. Outside this very slight discomfort on my part, my copy is marked-up extensively which is a good indication that I found this fine addition to the social sciences worthy of my time and effort. Though this book is somewhat on off the beaten track so to speak, other fine works on the social sciences that are worth your attention are Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (polymath classic), The Psychology of Judgment & Decision Making (classic), How We Know What Isn't So (very good), Mean Markets and Lizard Brains (Hidden Gem), Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger (Very Hidden Gem), or Poor Charlie's Almanack (Charlie's Insights).

Flawless Victory by The Dilettante

5 Stars
April 30, 2008
With no footnotes, no jargon, no namedropping and (almost) no mathmatics, this book clears all the conceptual underbrush away from the foundations of the social and behavioral sciences. Reading it was like watching an intellectual kung fu master in a rapid-fire series of celebrity deathmatches. As soon as Elster has dispatched Milton Friedman (Whup-POW!), he moves on to Steven Jay Gould. He chops ideas up into neat 10-page sections, says what he has to say, then cracks his knuckles and moves on. He does this so effortlessly that I found myself scratching my head ("how did I not see this before?") at the end of each section. It's not exactly fun - the reading can be dense - but it can be thrilling to simply feel the dust and cobwebs shoot out of your ears. I learned more in 500 pages than in 6 years of undergraduate survey courses. Highly, highly recommended.

An amazing vision of the whole of social science by Aaron Swartz

5 Stars
December 21, 2007
For the past forty years, Jon Elster has attempted to explain things ranging from the emotions to technological change. The result is dozens of books (and even more papers) in three languages across four universities. And throughout, his work has not just been exemplary social science, but has always struggled with the question of what social science _should be_ -- what kinds of explanations are legitimate, which techniques should be used, and so on. As he reaches his late sixties, it is understandable if he begins to think of his legacy. That certainly would help explain his latest book, _Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences_ (Cambridge University Press, 2007), a 500-page masterpiece that I expect will be seen as the summation of a brilliant career. It's a book unlike any other and, as a result, unless read from start to finish can seem bizarre, if only because one has little sense of what the book is trying to do. It is not a guidebook, or a textbook, or a piece of social science in itself. In short, it is nothing less than an attempt to summarize an idealized vision of the whole of social science in simple language. The book's foundational assumption (as implied by its title) is that the goal of social science is to discover explanations for social phenomena. It begins by describing what explanations are and discussing their different forms. But the bulk of the book consists of tools that can be used in explanations: emotions, norms, time discounting, weakness of will, magical thinking, cognitive dissonance, heuristics and biases, rationality, irrationality, neuroscience, evolution, externalities, game theory, pluralistic ignorance, informational cascades, collective action, cyclical preferences, institutions, etc. -- in short, the entire toolkit of the social sciences. Just as amazing as the breadth topics is the way in which they're covered. Elster explains each phenomenon clearly and concisely, so that any educated reader can understand them with little effort, without ever sacrificing intellectual depth. His explanations are peppered with examples from an amazing variety of sources: ancient history, recent history, personal experience, the classics of social science (e.g. Tocqueville), the great philosophers (Montaigne, Pascal, Mill), and classic novelists (e.g. Proust). The result is a book which not just introduces readers to the discoveries of the social sciences but to the intellectual world as a whole. Bibliographical notes following each chapter as well as the conclusion provide a rich guide for further exploration. And yet it's not simply a compendium of interesting results in the social sciences, but attempts to defend a particular conception of what the social sciences should be. In the conclusion, Elster defends his notion of social science as the attempt to discover particular explanations for particular phenomena against the "soft obscurantism" of the literary theorists and the "hard obscurantism" of the economists. As part of this, he turns his back on the notion of rational-choice models being an explanation in themselves, noting that their many assumptions are in desperate need of empirical defense. In response to an earlier draft of this review, Elster wrote "I'm glad you appreciate the details in my book, but you're missing the big picture, which is that there isn't any." Instead of trying to build a Grand Theory which explains all of social life, we should try to build explanations of particular phenomena from the nuts and bolts we have lying around. And "even if a dominant explanation of a given event or episode is discarded and then resurrected, the building blocks or mechanisms at work in the discarding and resurrection remain. The repertory, or the size of the toolbox, does not shrink." For anyone who cares about social science, Elster has done an amazing service in clearly describing the toolbox's contents and defending its importance.

Simply the best: read it at least twice by meno (New York, NY United States)

5 Stars
November 24, 2007
I read this book twice. The first time, I thought that it was excellent, the best compendium of ideas of social science by arguably the best thinker in the field. I took copious notes, etc. I agreed with its patchwork-style approach to rational decision making. I knew that it had huge insights applicable to my refusal of general theories [they don't work], rather limit ourselves to nuts and bolts [they work]. Then I started reading it again, as the book tends to locate itself by my bedside and sneaks itself in my suitcase when I go on a trip. It is as if the book wanted me to read it. It is what literature does to you when it is at its best. So I realized why: it had another layer of depth --and the author distilled ideas from the works of Proust, La Rochefoucault, Tocqueville, Montaigne, people with the kind of insights that extend beyond the ideas, and that makes you feel that a reductionist academic treatment of the subject will necessary distort it [& somehow Elster managed to combine Montaigne and Kahneman-Tversky]. So as an anti-Platonist I finally found a rigorous treatment of human nature that is not Platonistic --not academic (in the bad sense of the word). Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Intelligent introduction to the social sciences by Erik Wuttke (Atlanta, Ga)

5 Stars
December 27, 2006
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Nuts and Bolts is its accessibility. The language is clear and not overly technical, and despite the excessive use of footnotes the text flows and facilitates understanding. Elster gives us mechanisms, or nuts and bolts, to help us explain and understand complex social behavior and organization. This work is invaluable as an introduction to the social sciences, but it is not limited to the student or the specialist (of which I am neither). Elster does not make the mistake that countless other social scientists have made in falling for fixed rules and materialistic thinking; instead, he displays great wisdom in knowing the limits of the social sciences while at the same time being an eloquent advocate for rational choice and the development of a greater scientific understanding of human society.

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