This thoughtful book by George Akerlof and Bob Shiller is reviewed at length in The New Republic by Richard Posner. It is a mixed review, it's fair to say. Prof Posner welcomes many of the detailed arguments made by the authors, but disputes their interpretation of Keynes, and makes this broader point:
“As one reads this book, one has the sense that deep down Akerlof and
Shiller believe that being rational is the same as being right. That is
a mistake. It prevents them from entertaining the possibility that what
has now plunged the world into depression is a cascade of mistakes by
rational businessmen, government officials, academic economists,
consumers, and homebuyers, operating in an unexpectedly fragile
economic environment, and that what is retarding recovery is not the
“unreasoning fear” of which Franklin Roosevelt famously spoke but the
rational fears–the reasoning fear, to use Roosevelt's idiom–of
businesspeople, consumers, and officials who confront economic
uncertainties for which no one had prepared them.”
I recommend the book (reviewed on this blog by Richard Bronk recently) and the review alike – much food for thought in each.