Game Theory - the formal modelling of conflict and cooperation - first emerged as a recognized field with a publication of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour in 1944. Since then, game-theoretic thinking about choice of strategies and the interdependence of people's actions has influenced all the social s

This is an account of the period in which the initial hopes that game theory would revolutionize economics and the social sciences were disappoint- ed. The author shows how developments within game theory prepared the way for its future flourishing