by John Coates. (Find the Book)Coates' contribution to the high-interest topic of decision making the arena of popular titles by Jonah Lehrer (How We Decide, 2009) and Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011) hails from the realm of investment banking. A former financial trader, Coates combines his real-world experience and his clinical study of human physiology into a story of Wall Street speculators in action. Setting them as fictional characters in a bull market that turns into a bear, Coates constructs a perspective on financial bubbles in which the human endocrine and nervous systems are the central although unconscious actors. As his traders scan their screens, Coates dramatizes surges of hormones and firings of neurons as the traders place bets, comparing the traders' bodily sensations to those of athletes in competition and soldiers in combat. When crashing securities crush irrational exuberance, Coates reaches back to evolutionary biology to describe the fight-or-flight stressors besetting his traders. A provocative challenger to rational-choice views of high finance, Coates makes an exceptionally clear, readable presentation that is bound to influence arguments about the regulation of Wall Street. --Booklist
