INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.

Utilizing the linguistic insights of her "witty and brilliant" (Blythe Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet.

"Magical thinking" can be broadly defined as the belief that one's internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain's coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.

In a series of razor sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the "halo effect" cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the "sunk cost fallacy" can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we've realized they're not serving us. As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell's prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.

• We started tracking this book on August 26, 2023.
• This book was $14.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 5 times in the past 870 days.
• The current price of this book is $13.99 last checked 14 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $2.99 last reached on March 31, 2025.
• This book has been $2.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on May 1, 2025.
• This book has been $14.99 3 times since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social SciencesSocial SciencesPopular Culture
• Science & MathBehavioral SciencesCognitive Psychology

• Publication Date: April 9, 2024
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 268 Pages
• File Size: 28 KB