Synopsis
This book documents thousands of examples of miscalculation, misunderstanding, egregious prognostication, and errors, all systematically cataloged, footnoted, and set straight.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1998-07-01 | | Edition Description: | Expanded; Updated |
| Size | | Length: | 445 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.3 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 24.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
Did you ever have the uneasy feeling the experts are not . . . well, expert? "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."--Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929
"Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel."--Irving Thalbergs warning to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone With the Wind
"We dont like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."--Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962
"With over fifty foreign cars already on sale here the Japanese auto industry isnt likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."--Business Week, 1968
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."--President of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
"Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican who doesnt drool on stage."--The Wall Street Journal, in a 1995 editorial The Experts Speak systematically catalogues, footnotes, and sets straight these and a couple of thousand other examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies. The experts have been wrong about everything under, including, and beyond the sun: time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economics, politics, crime, education, the media, history, and science. In this expanded and updated edition (now more error-filled than ever), we see just how much the experts don't know. But the book also goes deeper, presenting a through-the-looking-glass chronicle of human knowledge: the story of what was and is so, as seen through the story of what we wanted to and did believe.
This new and updated version of a classic reference work--written by the authors of "The Officially Politically Correct Dictionary"--brings the history of distortions, errors, half-truths, and outright lies into the information age.
Industry Reviews
A revised and expanded version of the 1984 original, The Experts Speak collects hundreds of the dumbest predictions ever made by newspapers, critics, and business executives such as an L.A. surgeon's assessment that "smoking has a beneficial effect," a Decca Records exec's brainstorm that "groups of guitars are on their way out" after auditioning the Beatles, and BusinessWeek's insistence that the "Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself." Silly, but lots of fun.
Dirda
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