Nudged yes! Shame about the book. - Rated 
Was expecting a book on personal decision making. It was not to be; rather I was presented with case studies on higher level decision making (for civil servants and political decision makers). Shame really, but it does re-enforce the theme of the book;every decision and every message comes with a bias. You are warned.
Nudge gave me a false nudge... - Rated 
"Nudge is the book that changes the way we think about choice, showing how we can influence people, improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness"
Having read this blurb from the back cover of the book, it led me to believe this book will shed some light on how I can improve my decision making about health, wealth and happiness. It did not - this is what not the book is about at all.
While this book turns out not to be what I was after, it was still a nice book to read. Nudge is an interesting, easy-to-get-into book, and I find this one of the better written books in this genre. Nudge presents the concept and importance of "choice architecture", which is essentially the way in which choices are presented to a mass population can powerfully influence the majority outcome. This book uses plenty of day-to-day examples as case studies, most are common sense and easily understood, but the downside is they don't come across as very clever ideas.
The key conclusion that I took away from this book, in the authors' own words, is: "No choice is ever presented in a neutral way". I totally agree, and have even learned a lesson by choosing this book: the blurb gave me a false nudge, would not have picked this read otherwise.
A compelling argument for liberal authoritarianism - Rated 
I was given a copy of Nudge by my grandmother, who has a habit of buying books she feels are important (in this case it was because Obama is reported to be a fan), then passing them onto me to read on her behalf and provide a nutshell summary. I must say I was glad to get this one.
Previous reviews (including a 1-starrer) have criticised the fact that Nudge focuses on American issues. This is true, and to be honest I largely skipped the part about reforming the US health industry. However, the main idea of choice architecture is very interesting, and is presented in a professional and concise manner.
Thaler and Sunstein also spend time discussing the possible ethical implications of liberal authoritarianism, which they admit can look a bit 'neocon' at first. At the end of the day, they aren't denying anyone the choice to pick the wrong thing if they really want it - instead they argue that by making the 'default choice' that most people pick because it's directly in front of them or more convenient a better one, it will be better on an individual level and for soceity as a whole.
Not as life-altering as the blurb would have us believe, but a valuable addition to the social lexicon nonetheless.
Interesting and opinionated but with some serious flaws - Rated
I can't help thinking that the authors could very easily written the book in less than 5 pages. Much of it is little more than a collage of work which you can find in the likes of 'The Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell (namely, the story about the Yale students who were more likely to go get vaccinated against tetanus if the brochure showed the map to the medical office) and 'Undercover Economist' and 'The Logic of Life' by Tim Harford (since most of both books rave about free markets and response to incentives) as well as many others of that 'genre'.
No new concepts are introduced in this work - okay, I hadn't heard about 'libertarian paternalism' but even that is only a new name for a very old concept - think about Milton Friedman and you're not far - and 'choice architect' is nothing but a fancy name for what designers do since forever - be it store designers, systems analysts or commercial managers.
You don't believe me? Well, here's a list of topics from the book. See if they really sound new to you:
1. Arrangement of items in a cafeteria (read: any restaurant or shop) influences the choices made by customers. Doesn't explain how, though it's perfectly obvious that it does.
2. Although 'pure' free market followers believe that perfect information will be used by people to make perfect choices, many people just can't or won't. The authors call these people 'Humans' and 'Econs' to those people who make perfect decisions.
3. Biases such as anchoring, availability, representativeness, status quo, framing (think about lawyers) and the feeling of loss being higher than if you win something.
4. Clocky is a vicious little wake-up clocks that runs around your bedroom until you get up and shut it down. This was an internet meme a long time before this book came along.
5. We are influenced by what other people around us do or think about us. I always thought this was called 'peer pressure' and see no reason to rehash it into this book as though it's something new.
6. The fact that we make terrible decisions in large part because the costs of that decision are far into the future - medical insurance, pensions, mutual funds - or because they occur very infrequently - such as buying a house or choosing your university degree.
7. If you are designing something that a lot of people will use and you want to ensure enrollment by as many people as possible just set sensible defaults and make it easy for people to change if they need to.
8. Expect mistakes by people, who are Humans, not Econs, and design whatever you need to design having in mind these mistakes. It's called usability but the authors didn't mention it. Do they ignore the existence of the concept?
I could go on, but I think you get the picture. If you're new to that genre of books that seem to cover everything under the sun (Business/Economics/Politics/Sociology/Psychology), then Nudge is all very interesting. But if, like me, you already follow the genre, you will find very little here. I suggest you borrow it from a friend, and skim it.
Over-hyped - Rated 
This book has been very overhyped by a frankly impressive marketing and PR campaign. The central idea is that the world can be made a better place by companies/governments "nudging" us to make good decisions rather than more directly telling us to. Great idea, lovely. But it doesn't take a whole book to explain. And neither does it provide any sort of ground-breaking approach to public policy, no matter which politicians (Obama, Cameron) the PR people claim have read it. At the end of the day, there's a limit to the usefulness of "nudges". The government can either take real action to encourage people to make the sorts of decisions they believe to be beneficial, or they can allow people to make bad choices. No amount of nudging will allow them to do both. At the end of the day, if we want better public health, we'll just have to put up with the nanny state telling us not to smoke in enclosed public places. Nudging won't solve that. We can't have our cake and eat it.
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