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Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
 Review enough - Read this book! February 1, 2010
Bill Liao
Politics is not the most interesting thing in True Enough the information that really intrigued me was how truthiness is turning up all over the place and rather then being scared of this phenomena I see this as a really potent opportunity to promote some really good causes.
Fascinating too was the anlysis of peoples un seen biasses something which the book Blind Spots: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things is also very good at giving you an understanding for.
I really enjoyed the pace and humor as well as the messages of True Enough and I also believe that there is practical benefit in the philosophy of truthiness as I point out in m own work Stone Soup: The Secret Recipe for Making Something from Nothing often when people are starting a business they concern themselves with perfection. Perfection in the design, delivery and messaging of a product is impossible. Instead read True Enough and you can get a feel for how much is Enough to delver what people need and want and this can free you up to deliver that now rather than endlessly pursuing an ideal and thereby going out of business.
I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is interested int he way the world works now and who wants to have an impact on it.
Why the idiots are winning the argument December 19, 2009
hot-eyed moderate (Canada)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Here it is: a closely argued, patiently researched and carefully documented account of why it is that large numbers of Americans believe that Saddam was behind 9/11 or that Barack was not born in the US or that HIV does not cause AIDS. For anyone who (like me) struggles to understand why a rational person would think either Palin or Kucinich would make a good president, this is a must read. Manjoo bravely explores truthiness from the right and the left (though he does present a cogent and frightening explanation for why the right has a greater tendency to ignore the reality-based world).
It is ironic that "True Enough" seems to be "Exhibit A" for exactly the phenomenon Manjoo describes. I mean, you can't swing a dead cat in a bookstore without hitting a book by Beck, Coulter, Levin, O'Reilly, or the Freakonomics twins, and you can't surf the AM dial without hearing them live and in person. "True Enough" can boast strong reviews from respected publications, but that's about it. What was Farhad Manjoo thinking, writing a book about facts and reality? I mean, who'd read that?
True Enough is Much More than Good Enough October 28, 2009
Daniel Murphy (Redmond, OR USA)
14 out of 16 found this review helpful
Farhad Manjoo's True Enough, Living in a Post-Fact Society is a rarity: a quest for integrity of thought, and a quest for integrity of information. Many other books (e.g. Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future, and The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark) have taken vigorous and often angry stabs at the topic of delusional thinking and distortion of information, but none bury the knife in the heart of the matter as competently as Manjoo's True Enough.
Manjoo's prose is lucid and fluent in the languages of science, psychology, and politics. Rejecting the cowardice of a "well, you have your opinion, and I have the right to mine" approach (or non-approach) often used to defer the pursuit of serious inquiry, Manjoo states repeatedly that the purpose of inquiry is to arrive at the best answer achievable, an approach that necessarily excludes the weaker of competing theories. Evolution by natural selection AND intelligent design can't both be right; careful examination of the facts should elevate one explanation over the other. Careful examination of the facts, and a subsequent calm and collected judgment regarding a solution to the problem at hand, how hard can that be? Very, very hard, it becomes clear as the reader turns the pages of True Enough.
Why so hard to get at the truth? The road from collecting data to coming to an accurate conclusion, Manjoo's carefully researched book points out, is serpentine and filled with many truth-swallowing potholes. First, and paradoxically, access to reliable and vetted information in the age of Google and the internet is much harder to come by now than it was a few decades ago. If a website has a title that starts with "The Truth About...", it is an almost pathonomognic indicator that a double-click will yield you entry into looneytune territory. Click on The Truth about 9/11, the Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, The Truth about Vaccines, or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and then stand back as the spew of creative non-thinking gushes out like pus from a lanced boil, in giga-pixel glory.
But what if we ARE able to get our hands on accurate information, are we home free? Not even close, says Manjoo. In a fascinating exploration of the way the human brain processes information, the psychological mechanisms that we use to reinforce our chosen beliefs and deny access to threatening information, and the sociological phenomena that mold our perceptions of the world in which we live, Manjoo clearly illustrates just how rocky and arduous the road to quality truth-seeking is. True Enough, however, is neither rocky nor arduous: it is both fascinating and a wonderfully enjoyable read. Nor is it pessimistic, Manjoo's enthusiasm for the pursuit of accuracy and truth is infectious.
True Enough is jam-packed with absorbing and sometimes astounding examples of our human willingness to distort or avoid the truth, with compelling analyses of the conspiracy theories that surround 9/11, the Kennedy assassination, and the mistaken left-wing theory that the 2004 election was stolen from John Kerry in Ohio.
Most disturbing to me is something not explicitly stated by Manjoo, though his book makes the conclusion unavoidable: there is a fundamental divide between those who search for the truth, and those who PROCLAIM the truth. Those who proclaim the truth work backwards: they choose a truth, then deliberately and skillfully suborn the facts to fit. Thus did the cigarette companies roll on for half a century after it became clear that their product was a killer, thus have the opponents to health care reform and the efforts to develop a rational approach to global warming proceeded.
Far from an ideological or partisan screed, True Enough is a clarion call to all persuasions and to all reaches of the political spectrum to reject what has become known as "truthiness" and to replace it with an ardent search for carefully established truths.
Manjoo's integrity and impartiality give his book an uncommon dignity and gravity. The book is absent of ridicule and condescension, which is the way a book about the search for truth is best written.
 Some "Truthiness" Here Too October 12, 2009
Phil Roth (D.C.)
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
Manjoo is right about news consumers seeking to validate their existing prejudices, but he traffics in that old chestnut about mean-spirited, narrow-minded propaganda being primarily a nasty right-wing phenomenon. While he throws in a few examples from the left, his bias is clear: While lefties can be misguided in their conspiracy-mongering, the right is in the cockpit of the great and mendacious brainwashing machine. Sure, the Bush Administration threw some cash a few conservative pundits way, but the plaintiffs lawyers and left-wing Non-Government Organizations virtually dominated the agendas of the the mainstream media for forty years until talk radio, Fox and the internet came along. Their agendas, of course, aren't liberal, or even agendas -- they're just plain, well, right. Manjoo would have been better able to prove his thesis -- which is correct -- if he had investigated left-wing self-selection. Then again, why investigate the enlightened?
 An Eye Opener August 13, 2009
Mohamed Baba
This is book is a real eye opener. It is the kind of book which makes you really think twice after the first read about the current world we have to live in. For the novice, it introduces new concepts from psychology to sociology which help in better understanding the digital world, and how it truly affects us. Moreover it also explains certain trends that we see today but have no idea on how it actually came into being, like for instance some biases. Backed by reasonable evidence and a lot of investigative journalism, the author tries his level best to be as unbiased as possible in a very biased world.
The only reason I've given it 4 out of 5 stars is that it is not a book you can finish in one or two reads; well, for me at least. I personally finished Kite Runner in 9.5 hours almost non stop but this one, in a lot of different reads. However, that can also be attributed to the fact that this book is of a different genre. All in all, the book is a Must read, to know how society functions today, to understand the general media trends as well as to know, how not to get caught in the propagandist nooose. "Choose wisely."
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
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