Here's Richard Reeves, the new director of Demos, articulating his own significant place at the very heart of things in an Observer review of Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein.
"Everyone who is anyone has been nudged by the amiable prof (I bought him dinner)."
As Reeves points out, Thaler is very vogueish currently. He follows in a long line of American intellectuals crossing the Atlantic with theories that promise to revolutionise - or at least improve - British society. A few years ago it was Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone; more recently we embraced Malcolm Gladwell, twice and Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, authors of Freakonomics. There have been others, now forgotten, by me at least. Are we Brits easy marks for flashy US ideas or do Americans simply have the best thinkers these days?
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