One Review
Funnily enough, reviewers aren’t thronging and jostling to review Why Truth Matters. Maybe they figured out that it was actually an extended exercise in irony, or something, and didn’t want to be made to look foolish by taking it seriously. Anyway there is one review from Library Journal, posted at Barnes & Noble.
Benson and Stangroom (coeditors, www. butterfliesandwheels.com) set out to prove why truth matters. Their argument isn’t so much one for truth as one against ideologies and philosophies that minimize truth’s importance. These counterarguments include discourses on basic human thought, cultural relativism, political reasoning, feminism, and other current and historical thought movements. The writing is superbly engaging, and each chapter is well argued. But the book’s strong point is its reasonable and concise overview of the major arguments and viewpoints directly and indirectly limiting the precedence of truth. This overview allows readers to grasp easily not only each argument but also the subtle patterns into which the arguments connect. Though easy to follow, the text does assume a fair amount of prior reading. Recommended for academic collections and larger public systems with suitable demand.-Jason Moore, Madison Cty. Lib. Syst., MS Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Well, yeah. It does assume at least a little prior reading. It wouldn’t be anyone’s choice for the first or only book a person ever read. But some books are like that. They’re part of a conversation. Not all books can be the ideal choice for the first or only book a person ever reads. Some have to fit into the middle somewhere, so that the conversation can go on. (I mention that because it’s actually quite difficult to figure out how much to assume readers will know or be able to figure out and how much they will want explained. Too much in one direction and you frustrate readers and perhaps make them feel ignorant or stupid or both, but too much in the other direction and you risk making them feel patronized and insulted and also slowed down and impeded and plain bored. It can be very tricky.)
It wouldn’t be anyone’s choice for the first or only book a person ever read…
Damn. And I just sent our daughter to a four-year-old’s birthday party with a copy as a gift. Silly me.
Somewhat more seriously, I can’t even do my for-what-it’s-worth blogbound review yet. The talented people at amazon.ca seem to have lost my order. My pro-forma complaint on the subject, is, however, I can hope, somewhat less lost, and will be handled as promptly and courteously and solicitously as one would expect from an anonymous call centre operator working in Bangalore for three-and-one-half rupees per year.*
*No, I don’t really know if Amazon.ca really hires people in Bangalore at outrageously exploitative wages. Nor, for that matter, do I really know what three-and-one-half rupees a year would actually buy. But I’m a mite peeved about said missing order right now, and I have to take it out somehow.
Well Amazon’s not exactly famous for overpaying people even in this country, let alone in Bangalore.
Maybe I shouldn’t say that; maybe instead of pointing out what good books people who buy WTM also buy, they’ll start saying those people buy books on angelology and how Jesus conspired with the freemasons to invent phlogiston.
Well, next time I’m thinkin’ it’s go with a decent local bricks ‘n mortar bookstore. Woulda coulda shoulda, I guess.
Well, if you want reviews, here’s one from a bricks & mortar store in Sydney:
http://www.abbeys.com.au/items.asp?id=350345
(Abbeys is a great place for checking out books you can never afford & would never find anywhere else here)
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Why Truth Matters
Author : JEREMY and BENSON STANGROOM
Format : Hardback
ISBN : 0826476082
Publisher : Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Publication Date (AUS) : May 2006
Pages : 192
Imprint : Continuum
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Web Price AUD$39.95
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Description
A witty and eloquent debunking, grounded in solid philosophical scholarship, of the ‘fashionable nonsense’ that pervades modern culture and academia. Truth has always been a central preoccupation of philosophy in all its forms and traditions. However, in the late twentieth century truth became suddenly rather unfashionable. The precedence given to assorted political and ideological agendas, along with the rise of relativism, postmodernism and pseudoscience in academia, led to a decline both of truth as a serious subject, and an intellectual tradition that began with the Enlightenment. “Why Truth Matters” is a timely, incisive and entertaining look at how and why modern thought and culture lost sight of the importance of truth. It is also an eloquent and inspiring argument for restoring truth to its rightful place. Jeremy Stangroom and Ophelia Benson, editors of the successful butterfliesandwheels website – itself established to ‘fight fashionable nonsense’ – identify and debunk such nonsense, and the spurious claims made for it, in all its forms.Their account ranges over religious fundamentalism, Holocaust denial, the challenges of postmodernism and deconstruction, the willful misinterpretation of evolutionary biology, identity politics and wishful thinking. “Why Truth Matters” is both a rallying cry for the Enlightenment vision and an essential read for anyone who’s ever been bored, frustrated, bewildered or plain enraged by the worst excesses of the fashionable intelligentsia.
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