Should You Tip for Takeout?: Solving the Puzzles of Everyday Life

The thinking person's book of big answers to small questions. Applying tools for rationality from economics, law, and elsewhere to the everyday puzzles reveals fresh ways to consider problems of any size--including whether to tip for takeout.

Learn how to make better decisions in ordinary life. Does safely driving over the speed limit hurt anyone? Should you be allowed to spy on sports opponents? Is it fair to recline your seat on an airplane? Should you let someone who's in a hurry cut in line?

Saul Levmore and Ward Farnsworth invite you on a witty, accessible, and insightful tour of life's little puzzles and ways to understand them better. As the authors show, analyzing common questions is both fun and deeply rewarding.

But this isn't just a book about practical wisdom to make better choices--it presents a toolkit for a more rational life. Learn how Bayesian updating applies to getting a bad medical test. Discover how optimal-stopping theory applies to making the best choice whether buying a home, looking for a job, or finding the right life partner. See the hidden zero-sum game in buying a lifetime pass to anything.

To paraphrase the authors: Aids to rationality are most enjoyable, and easiest to learn about, when you meet them in familiar settings, so that's where we'll see them in action--with many insights along the way about business, politics, and the rest of life.

This is a friendly, funny, and deeply smart compendium devoted to the art of better thinking. It offers food for thought and conversation as well as a way to navigate those "should I" questions that define our lives. The authors' love of teaching shines through in this fascinating book that you'll want to read more than once.

Author: Saul Levmore,Ward Farnsworth
Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
Published: 10/27/2026
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781567928778

About the Author

Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past president of the American Law Deans Association and of the American Law and Economics Association.

Ward Farnsworth is Professor and W. Page Keeton Chair at the University of Texas School of Law. He is author of The Latin Tamer, The Socratic Method, The Practicing Stoic, and the Farnsworth Classical English series which includes Argument, Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Style--all published by Godine.