Dense with facts, convincing arguments, and curious statistics, this is an ingenious collection of light entertainment for...
A collection of 75 of the Scientific American columns by author and gadfly Shermer (The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, 2015, etc.).
The author turns a critical eye toward questions big, small, and trivial. One of the biggest: is religion a good thing? Studies and statistics give the answer: it depends. Though Western nations with high rates of religious belief and church attendance also have higher incidents of suicide, teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted disease, as individuals, religious people are healthier, friendlier, happier, and more charitable. Simple math, not science, proves that extraordinarily rare events occur regularly. Despite 1 in 200,000,000 odds, someone must win the lottery, yet the winner never doubts that it’s a miracle. Those with low opinions of eyewitness testimony, tabloid science, quacks who write bestsellers, paranormal phenomena, alien abductions, and folk medicine will find plenty of supporting arguments in this book. Most readers do not yearn for proof that actual events (9/11, the Holocaust, the moon landing) really happened, but deniers exist, and Shermer refutes them at every turn. Satanic cults, Bigfoot, and hermit geniuses who disprove Einstein turn out to be extremely difficult to find, and Shermer explains why. He admits that, sadly, most people admire science and the advancements that result from experimentation, but only a minority believe that a phenomenon is probably true if backed by evidence and unlikely if it isn’t. Two-thirds of Americans prefer creationism to evolution, and 60 percent believe in extrasensory perception. Worse, belief in reason is uncool. In movies and TV, the skeptic is always wrong.
Dense with facts, convincing arguments, and curious statistics, this is an ingenious collection of light entertainment for readers who believe that explaining stuff is a good idea.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62779-138-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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