MARIA KONNIKOVA

Best Selling Author | Psychologist | Poker Player

In today’s lightning-quick, smart-screen world, most of us are walking around as if our eyes were closed. Unthinking. Asleep. Lost in routine. But today, leading neuroscientists, psychologists, and social scientists are mapping how the brain actually works—its strengths, weaknesses, biases and quirks. Maria Konnikova is translating insights from the frontiers of the mind into imminently readable, perspective changing prose—both in her New Yorker blog and in her New York Times bestsellers (translated, so far, into 19 languages). With page-turning clarity, she brings modern life into crystal focus, helping even the brightest, sharpest minds snap awake—to make better decisions and get to know themselves a lot better.

Her latest book, The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time, is a compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con artists. It’s a careful, nuanced study of the art of persuasion—and deception—and her second New York Times bestseller. But at its root, Konnikova argues, mastering the “con” is about listening to people to understand what makes them tick. “A lot of the same skills that make a good con artist also make a good leader, a good business person, a good lawyer, a good writer,” she says, meaning The Confidence Game is essential reading for anyone hoping to lead, convince, inspire, or sell to other people. Called “entertaining, insightful” (Boston Globe), “fascinating” (The Economist),“unnerving” (Washington Post), and a “page turner” (Psychology Today), it also received the Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

In her breakout New York Times bestseller and first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, Konnikova explores the famous detective’s signature methods of observation, logical deduction, and mindfulness, showing us how to apply his techniques in everyday situations. In other words, it shows readers how to “engage mindfully with yourself and your world as a matter of course,” she writes. To Scientific American, it lights the way for readers “to sharpen the ways they observe the world, store and retrieve memories, and make decisions.” The New York Post calls it “a treatise on how the Watsons of the world can smarten up … culled from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works and cutting-edge psych research.”

Konnikova’s third book, set to arrive in 2019, is The Biggest Bluff: her deep-dive into the world of highstakes poker, and her own journey, under excellent tutelage, from a novice to pro player. At heart, though, it isn’t a book about poker at all. Rather, it’s about understanding how luck can shape our lives, how to perform well under pressure—against seemingly unbeatable odds—and how to play the hands we’re dealt to the best of our ability.

Konnikova previously wrote the weekly “Literally Psyched” column for Scientific American as well as the “Artful Choice” blog for Big Think. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American MIND, and Scientific American, among others. Born in Moscow, Konnikova came to the United States when she was four years old. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government. A former producer on the Charlie Rose show on PBS, and host of the longform storytelling podcast The Grift, she received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia.

Visit Maria Konnikova’s website