Book Description
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 Thalberg's warning to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone
With the Wind
"We don't 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 isn't 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 doesn't
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.
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.
About the Author
Christopher Cerf is the co-editor of The Politically
Correct Dictionary and Handbook and The Eighties: A Look Back
at the Tumultuous Decade, 1980-1989. He is a former
contributing editor to the National Lampoon, and he co-edited
the newspaper parody Not the New York Times.
Victor Navasky is the publisher and editorial director of The
Nation. He is the author of the American Book Award winner
Naming Names and Kennedy Justice.
