Available:*
Library | Item Barcode | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... LeRoy - Woodward Memorial Library | 0547034 | 153.83 VAND | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Niagara Falls Public Library | 34305010269325 | 153.83 VAND | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Why do we get so embarrassed when a colleague wears the same shirt? Why do we eat the same thing for breakfast every day, but seek out novelty at lunch and dinner? How has streaming changed the way Netflix makes recommendations? Why do people think the music of their youth is the best? How can you spot a fake review on Yelp?
Our preferences and opinions are constantly being shaped by countless forces - especially in the digital age with its nonstop procession of "thumbs up" and "likes" and "stars." Tom Vanderbilt, bestselling author of Traffic , explains why we like the things we like, why we hate the things we hate, and what all this tell us about ourselves.
With a voracious curiosity, Vanderbilt stalks the elusive beast of taste, probing research in psychology, marketing, and neuroscience to answer myriad complex and fascinating questions. If you've ever wondered how Netflix recommends movies or why books often see a sudden decline in Amazon ratings after they win a major prize, Tom Vanderbilt has answers to these questions and many more that you've probably never thought to ask.
Author Notes
Tom Vanderbilt is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in Wired, Nest, the New York Times Magazine, & The Nation.
He is author of The Sneaker Book: An Anatomy of an Industry & An Icon.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In his previous book, Vanderbilt (Traffic) wrote about why people drive the way they do. In this expansive follow-up, he takes a deep look at why people like what they like. Vanderbilt covers the topic exhaustively, examining varied social and psychological factors. He interviews, among other people, the vice president of product innovation for Netflix, the principal engineer at "music intelligence" company Echo Nest, and a Dutch psychologist who also happens to be a judge at a Paris cat show. In each chapter, he explores a different area of taste, including food, social networks, music playlists, and art. As he concludes (in a pithy "field guide to liking"), "Trying to explain, or understand, any one person's particular tastes-including one's own-is always going to be a maddeningly elusive and idiosyncratic enterprise." Reading this book will cause readers to think twice before clicking "like" on Facebook, rating a film on Netflix, or ordering what the server says is the menu's most popular item. Agent: Zoe Pagnamenta, Zoe Pagnamenta Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Have you ever wondered what mixture of genes and upbringing prompts someone to choose black coffee over one with cream and sugar? Or to eschew coffee altogether and sip on tea or plain water? According to Vanderbilt (Traffic, 2008), in this meticulously researched and fascinating report on the erratic nature of taste, the answers to those questions lie not just in nature and nurture but also in a wide spectrum of influences, from momentary whims to clever advertising. For a chapter on edible preferences, Vanderbilt interviewed leading food scientists and taste researchers who confirmed that sweetness is a predilection we're born with, whereas a yen for bitter flavors, among others, can be cultivated. A chapter covering online social media explores the communal pressures involved in liking Facebook posts and rating Netflix movies, while one on art appreciation shows how often fads can sway opinion. Vanderbilt's work will appeal to anyone who's ever been astonished by extreme taste differences between friends, and to anyone working in an industry where pleasing people is a top priority.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2016 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
SPAIN IN OUR HEARTS: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, by Adam Hochschild. (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99.) Hochschild, the author of "King Leopold's Ghost," structures this account of the conflict as a collective biography of Americans who fought for the Republican side. He investigates the romantic appeal of the cause and the reasons for its failure. HYSTOPIA, by David Means. (Picador, $18.) In this novel within a novel - framed as a manuscript by a fictional Vietnam veteran, Eugene Allen, written shortly before he committed suicide - John F. Kennedy is entering his third term as president and has founded a program, the Psych Corps, to treat traumatized soldiers. Allen's story centers on two corps agents who have fallen in love and set off to recover a young woman who has been abducted. LOUISA: The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams, by Louisa Thomas. (Penguin, $18.) Born in London, the woman who married John Quincy Adams lived across Europe with her family, then her diplomat husband, before coming to the United States. These experiences helped set her apart, as did the trove of writing she left behind. Thomas draws on Louisa's memoirs, travelogues and extensive correspondence to offer a rich interior portrait. FOR A LITTLE WHILE: New and Selected Stories, by Rick Bass. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $18.99.) In this collection of tales, humans act on their animal natures, and the natural world is suffused with the holy; in one story, an ice storm and powerful arctic front leads a dog trainer and her client to an encounter with the sublime. As our reviewer, Smith Henderson, put it, Bass, "a master of the short form," writes not only "to save our wild places, but to save what's wild and humane and best within us." YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice, by Tom Vanderbilt. (Vintage, $16.95.) Vanderbilt, a journalist, has written a guide to the invisible forces shaping personal preferences - and the companies trying desperately to understand, and profit from, taste. Taste is both contextual and categorical, he argues, leading to a baffling capriciousness in what people like and why. ELIGIBLE, by Curtis Sittenfeld. (Random House, $17.) A retelling of "Pride and Prejudice" unfolds in the Cincinnati suburbs: Liz, a magazine writer in New York, comes home to find her family in disarray, and meets Darcy, now in the guise of a neurosurgeon from San Francisco who is profoundly underwhelmed by the Midwest. Sittenfeld's version seamlessly transplants Jane Austen's story to a modern American setting.
Kirkus Review
The science behind the choices we make. After insightfully scrutinizing vehicular driving habits, Vanderbilt (Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, 2008, etc.), a contributing editor for Wired UK, Outside, and Artforum, now explores what compels our selection process in everything from movies and music to munchies and the "chromatic sweet spot" of a favorite color. "We are faced with an ever-increasing amount of things to figure out whether we like or dislike," writes the author, "and yet at the same time there are fewer overarching rules and standards to go by in helping one decide." Throughout the book's entertaining chapters on the partiality of items like foods, Netflix movies, songs, and online social interactivity, Vanderbilt examines the methodology and psychological nature of the "taxonomy of taste." He notes that while websites like Yelp and YouTube enable users to quick-grade products, services, and media-driven experiences and partake in their popularity and likability, these sites also incorporate algorithms that ingeniously weed out fake reviews, which can skew results and overall impressions. Supporting theories on taste development and personal bias, the author interviewed anthropologists on dog breeding and a host of psychologists and psychology professors, who fascinatingly discuss the sensory influences of dessert and a hypothesis attesting that repeated exposure reinforces likability. In his exploration of the predictability, instability, and malleability of our partialities, Vanderbilt also spent quality time with opinionated competition judges and at a beer festival, where, in matters of flavor and variety, the pairings and possibilities were endless. In a conclusive closing section, the author seeks to clarify the multilayered dynamics of predilection, and though he has produced an extremely convincing effort, he admits that examining this subject remains a "maddeningly elusive and idiosyncratic enterprise." Like it or not, there's much to behold in this exhaustively researched, intellectual assessment of human preference. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Vanderbilt's (Traffic) latest goes to great lengths to look at what drives peoples' choices and preferences. He visits the offices of Netflix to talk about recommendations and stars, explores the world of fine dining in New York City, and visits a cat show to discuss beauty competitions and a craft beer competition to consider how tastes change over time. While the wide range of topics may appear scattered, they all come back to the question of why people like what they like, diving as well into many entertaining smaller questions along the way. Jeffrey Kafer provides a comfortable reading for this work that is a bit off the beaten track but perfect for the right kind of inquiring mind. VERDICT Highly recommended for those in marketing, communication, web and interface design, and, of course, librarians. ["A fascinating account that encourages readers to reflect upon their own preferences while making a compelling argument that those preferences can, and do, change with little conscious effort": LJ 2/1/6 review of the Knopf hc.]-Tristan M. Boyd, Austin, TX © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Introduction What's Your Favorite Color (And Why Do You Even Have One)? | p. 3 |
| Chapter 1 What Would You Like? Thinking About Our Taste for Food | p. 17 |
| Chapter 2 The Fault is Not in Our Stars, But in Ourselves Liking in a Networked Age | p. 52 |
| Chapter 3 How Predictable Is Our Taste? What Your Playlist Says About You (And What You Say About Your Playlist) | p. 81 |
| Chapter 4 How Do We Know What We Like? The Ecstasies and Anxieties of Art | p. 112 |
| Chapter 5 Why (And How) Tastes Change | p. 152 |
| Chapter 6 Beer, Cats, and Dirt How Do Experts Decide What's Good? | p. 184 |
| Conclusion Tasting Notes How to Like | p. 223 |
| Notes | p. 227 |
| Index | p. 291 |