I wrote Breakdown of Will in response to Cambridge editor Terry Moore's suggestion that I summarize Picoeconomics. This book is simpler and, I think, clearer. I have also added a great deal, both of research and theory, that I have discovered since Picoeconomics was published in 1992.

I've assumed no familiarity with hyperbolic discounting or intertemporal bargaining, so readers of Picoeconomics will find some repetition. However, if you've read the earlier book, you shouldn't assume that this book will therefore be a rehash of ideas you've seen before. In everything I've written I've thought it best to build from the ground up, rather than referring the new reader to works that may be hard to get; drafts of parts of this work have appeared not only in Picoeconomics but also in articles in Jon Elster's and Ole-Jorgen Skog's Getting Hooked and Elster's Addiction: Entries and Exits, The Journal of Law and Philosophy, and a precis in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. However, Breakdown of Will pulls these works together and goes beyond them.

You may be surprised by the conversational style I use. I've adopted this style partly for readability – as a discipline against too many subordinate clauses – but also from a belief that the supposed benefit of an impersonal voice (“the language of scholars”) is false. The fact that someone uses formal language doesn't mean she's objective, and formal language makes it harder to guess at her actual thought processes.