Preface

WE DIDN’T SET out to write a new book. The plan was simply to revise our 1991 book, Thinking Strategically. But it didn’t quite turn out that way.

One model for writing a revision comes from Borges’s character Pierre Menard, who decides to rewrite Cervantes’s Don Quixote. After great effort, Menard’s revision ends up being word-for-word identical to the original. However, 300 years of history and literature have passed since Quixote, including Quixote itself. Although Menard’s words are the same, his meaning is now entirely different.

Alas, our original text wasn’t Don Quixote, and so the revision did require changing a few words. In fact, most of the book is entirely new. There are new applications, new developments in the theory, and a new perspective. So much is new that we decided a new title was called for as well. Although the words are new, our meaning remains the same. We intend to change the way you see the world, to help you think strategically by introducing the concepts and logic of game theory.

Like Menard, we have a new perspective. When we wrote Thinking Strategically, we were younger, and the zeitgeist was one of self-centered competition. We have since come to the full realization of the important part that cooperation plays in strategic situations, and how good strategy must appropriately mix competition and cooperation.*