A book that asks - and answers - one of life's most uncomfortable questions: what if I'm wrong?
Kathryn Schulz has written for a number of US publications from Rolling Stone to the New York Times, on subjects as varied as right-wing film festivals to the impact of antidepressant use on Japanese culture. In 2004 she was awarded a Pew Fellowship in International Journalism.
A real find, Schulz's book is a funny and philosophical meditation
on why error is mostly a humane, courageous and extremely desirable
human trait. She flies high in the intellectual skies, leaving
beautiful sunlit contrails. God isn't her co-pilot; Iris Murdoch
seems to be
*New York Times*
A brilliant new manifesto urging us to reassess our relationship
with our own mistakes ... Since reading Schulz's book, I have been
trying harder to train myself to think systematically about my own
mistakes
*Independent*
A compelling meditation on the human condition. By combining
personal stories with research into learning and memory, Schulz
exposes psychological tricks we play on ourselves when we cling to
beliefs in the face of evidence
*New Scientist*
It is a courageous achievement to have gazed so long at the Gorgon
of human wrongness and then written a book at all, let alone an
enjoyable one. Schulz displays a gift for expressing hard ideas
simply, and with humour
*Observer*
Schulz's book is filled with incidental pleasures ... Richly
entertaining
*Sunday Times*
Kathryn Schulz's brilliant, spirited, and necessary inquiry into
the essential humanity of error will leave you feeling
intoxicatingly wrongheaded
*Tom Vanderbilt, author of TRAFFIC*
Schulz mounts a spirited defence of the value of being wrong
*London Review of Books*
This book is both wise and clever, full of fun and surprise about a
topic so central to our lives that we almost never even think about
it. But there are very few problems we face, as individuals or as a
society, that couldn't be helpfully addressed if we were willing to
at least entertain the idea that we might not be entirely right
*Bill McKibben, author of THE END OF NATURE and EAARTH*
Being Wrong is full of fascinating stories and quirky pieces of
research in the manner of Malcolm Gladwell, but Schulz interprets
all her research from a Jamesian viewpoint, where "truth" is not
something free-standing, but a function of the way humans interact
with the world. Her insight is to recognise that this all-too
contingent definition of "truth" is unsettling: we want truth to be
written on stone rather than sand
*Daily Telegraph*
An insightful and delightful discussion of the errors of our ways -
why we make mistakes, why we don't know we are making them and what
we do when recognition dawns ... Schulz is the patient naturalist
who carefully examines the nasty little miracles the rest of us so
eagerly discard.
*International Herald Tribune*
In this lovely book about human mistakes the sickeningly young,
forbiddingly clever and vexingly wise American journalist Kathryn
Schulz ... argues passionately for the value of error. The
experience of being wrong, she argues, helps to make us better
people, with richer lives ... What is most cherishable about this
bumper book of other people's booboos is its insistence that to
experience error is, at its best, to find adventure - and even
contentment.
*Guardian*
Firmly in the Gladwellesque genre of applying savvy journalistic
technique to produce an insight into something that probably should
have been obvious but we didn't really think about until the author
teased it out ... Some of the best parts of the book - and the most
disquieting - are those that show how badly our own minds can let
us down when it comes to memory.
*Financial Times*
A compelling meditation on the human condition. By combining
personal stories with research into learning and memory, Schulz
exposes the psychological tricks we play on ourselves when we cling
to beliefs in the face of the evidence.
*New Scientist*
Schulz wears her considerable learning lightly and renders complex
ideas as accessible as possible.
*Metro*
It's not easy to write about such complex subjects in a lively and
often very funny way, but Schulz pulls it off with aplomb ... a
joyful and very readable book that will force readers to reconsider
their own attitudes to error and belief.
*Sunday Business Post*
Schulz mounts a spirited defence of the value of being wrong.
*LRB*
A luminously intelligent investigation of our propensity to error
... Being Wrong may be one of the most important books published
for many years. It may seem paradoxical to try to see aright our
universal, inveterate tendency to be wrong, but Schulz succeeds
brilliantly. This sobering and yet liberating inquiry could make a
major dent on the stupidity of the world.
*TLS*
A brilliant book with a sweeping grasp of philosophy and physics
and all points in between.
*Bill Clinton*
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