Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The prepublication reviews were SO positive, I thought “I just have to read this book!” I am not yet confident that I made a mistake. I am fairly confident that there is a serious problem with the book’s core thesis. Sufficiently serious that I may, in the end, completely pan it. The book begins with a quiz of certain basic facts that the author claims most people do not known. Indeed, most people systematically get the answers wrong, more commonly than would happen by chance. (So they are worse than chimpanzees. A minor problem is that some of the claims the author offers as incontrovertible facts (most people in the world have a middle income), are arguably false unless one employs a highly dubious meaning of “middle income. The more serious problem is that the overarching conclusion: things are not as bad as we think they are, is at least misleading and quite possibly false, unless—again—one is working with a dubious interpretation of “not as bad as we think they are.” Let me explain: the authors complain that we too often divvy the world up into the rich and the poor. But that, they claim, is just false. Well . . . it at all depends. It they mean . . . what the evidence does show . . . that there are fewer people (percentage wise) in extreme poverty or fewer people (percentage wise) who lack access to all medical care (e.g., vaccinations), then they are right. Although understanding that they are right might be some grounds for optimism, it completely ignores that a) the decline in the absolute number of people in poverty is slight, b) the gap between the very rich and what they dub the middle income has exploded, and c) given the ordering of society, what is required for success has increased more quickly than has the ability of most people to take advantage of available opportunities. That is true both between countries and within even very rich ones. Thus, while the top 1% in the US are vastly wealthier than their earlier counterparts, huge swaths of people in the lower middle class have far fewer genuine opportunities than did their parents. Thus, their book could easily become a way to excuse the poverty and inequality that we do have, and fail to consider the consequence of that inequality (e.g., on human health). So rather than correct some misperceptions—a very laudable goal—I fear they are substituting a different set of misperceptions that can be used—and almost certainly are being used—to justify enormous disparities in wealth and well-being. I initially gave it a 2. I lowered it to a 1. I refuse to finish the book. A waste of my money. The author makes far too many gloating self-references. Many of his "facts" are misleading. I think about my reaction when watching law and order TV shows when the judge demands that the person on the stand: "just answer 'yes' or 'no'. . The problem is that if I follow the judges demands, I will often NOT be telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Most of these facts are true, if one interprets the terms in some unusual or nonstandard ways. I want us to base our choices on evidence. This book does NOT help that cause. Shame.