Resources

Web resources

• Wikipedia article on game theory.
  
  
• gametheory.net, a web site devoted to game theory. It includes, among other things, Game theory in the popular press, a collection of links to articles about game theory in biology, ethics and religion, psychology, politics, security and terrorism, etc. (Seems to stop in 2006.)
  
  
• Mind your Decisions, by Presh Talwalkar, a high-quality blog that features game-theory topics.
  
  
• Freakonomics: The Hidden Side of Everything, a New York Times blog by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. This link gathers posts related to game theory.
  
  
• VirtualLabs in evolutionary game theory, demos illustrating recent research.

On-line game theory texts

• Game Theory: a Nontechnical Introduction to the Analysis of Strategy by Roger McCain.
  
  
• Strategies and Games: Theory and Practice by Prajit K. Dutta. Go to the library home page and click on "Course Reserves."

Some books about game theory (there are many!)

• Game Theory: Decisions, Interaction and Evolution by James N. Webb. A 2007 text intended for use in a mathematics department.
  
  
• Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life by Avinash K. Dixit and Barry J. Nalebuff. The best popular introduction to game theory that I know of.
  
  
• Games of Strategy by Avinash K. Dixit and Susan Skeath. A freshman-sophomore textbook version of the previous book.
  
  
• Game Theory and Strategy by Philip D. Straffin. A short introduction to game theory. Chapter 24 analyzes the rather bizarre organization of certain Pathan tribes of northwestern Pakistan.
  
  
• An Introduction to Game Theory by Martin J. Osborne. A good introductory text at about the level of our course, with lots of examples.
  
  
• Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict by Roger B. Myerson. A more advanced text, but careful and clear.
  
  
• Biblical Games: Game Theory and the Hebrew Bible by Steven J. Brams.
  
  
• The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod.
  
  
• Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Robert Wright. Nonzero sum games and human history.
  
  
• Competition: The Birth of a New Science by James Case. Contends that game theory together with its experimental side constitute a new science.
  
  
• Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction by Ken Binmore. Short, to-the-point, discussion of controversies involving game theory.
  
  
• Playing for Real: A Text on Game Theory by Ken Binmore. A recent (2007) entertaining text.
  
  
• Games, Strategies and Decision Making by Joseph Harrington. A recent (2008) well-written text.
  
  
• Game Theory Evolving: A Problem-Centered Introduction to Modeling Strategic Interaction by Herbert Gintis.
• Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life by Martin A. Nowak.
  
  
• SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed by Martin Nowak. Nowak is perhaps the leading expert on the role of cooperation in evolution.

Interesting articles

• On the Origin of Cooperation by Elizabeth Pennisi (Science, September 4, 2009)
  
  
• Can Game Theory Predict When Iran Will Get the Bomb? by Clive Thompson (New York Times Magazine, August 12, 2009)
  
  
• Fish, parasites, and the prisoner's dilemma (Nature, October 16, 2008): article about the authors and research article
  
  
• The game of Chicken and the debt crisis by Dana Milbank (Washington Post, July 22, 2011).
  
  
• Zero-sum games and the post-crisis world by Michael Lind (Salon, July 26, 2011).
  
  
• The prisoner's dilemma and the Greek debt crisis by George Chondrakis (Huffington Post, July 27, 2011)
  
  (The last three were found by searching for "game theory" in Google News.

Sgt. Crowley vs. Prof. Gates

• Wikipedia artice on the Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy
  
  
• "The prof, the cop, yo mama" by Barry Saunders (News and Observer, July 28, 2009)

Software

• Gambit, game theory software and tools. As far as I know, Gambit includes the most advanced routines available for computing Nash equilibria. Remarkably, it's free and runs on a desktop computer.
  
  
• Dynamo, Mathematica notebooks for generating phase diagrams, vector fields, and other graphics related to evolutionary game theory.