When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life - Paperback

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When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life
  • When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life
When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life - Paperback

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . .: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life - Paperback

by Steven Pinker
$22.00
$22.00
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Hardcover $30.00 Paperback $22.00

Book Overview

by Steven Pinker (Author)

From one of the world's most celebrated intellectuals, a "fascinating" (Financial Times), brilliantly insightful work that explains how we think about each other's thoughts about each other's thoughts, ad infinitum.

It sounds impossible, but Steven Pinker shows that we do it all the time. This awareness is called common knowledge, and it has a momentous impact on our social, political, and economic lives.

Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right and coalescing behind a political leader or movement. It's also necessary for social coordination: everything from meeting up at a time and place to forming enduring bonds of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech.

But people also may strive to avoid common knowledge--to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can't know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room.

Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life's enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that seem to come from out of nowhere, the eruption of cancel culture, and even the awkwardness of a first date.

Author Biography

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today."

Number of Pages: 384
Dimensions: 0.9 x 8.3 x 5.5 IN
Publication Date: September 01, 2026
ISBN9781668011591
Author Steven Pinker
PublisherScribner Book Company
GenreEducation, Self-help & personal development, and Society & culture
FormatPaperback
PublishedSeptember 2026
LanguageENG- English
Pages384
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Nonfiction Psychology Science Social Science

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About Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He has won many prizes for his teaching, his research on language, cognition, and social relations, and his twelve books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Rationality. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and one of Time's "100 Most Influential People in the World Today."

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