by William Poundstone

isbn: 038541580X
subject: General Science, Computing, Biography, Nonfiction, History
finished: 12/23/1997

Prisoner's Dilemma is about three closely related topics: John Von Neumann's life, game theory, and the politics of the cold war. It's very interesting, but not particularly well written; it feels like Poundstone bit off too much, and can't juggle all the pieces in a coherent way.

The prisoner's dilemma is a game, or thought experiment, in which the rational course of action for each player is to defect, or to betray the other player. This is fascinating because there are real-life situations with the same structure as the prisoner's dilemma, and if everyone defected our civilization would not work. The book explores this and other apparent paradoxes in an intelligent way, and is generally a good read.