Customer Reviews

Good News is the Bad News is Wrong (A Touchstone book)

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Ben Wattenberg is one of the most original and interesting social thinkers in America. In this work he takes a look at a whole list of claims being made against the United States which argue for its decline, and provides persuasive arguments against them. He also tells us much good news about America which as he understands it is continuing to prosper, continuing to provide more freedom for more people than any country in history. This book in its time was a refreshing antidote to the claims that Japan and Germany were about to overtake the US economically. Wattenberg's faith in America has certainly been borne out in the years since the book was published as it now stands as the sole superpower in the world, the leader politically, militarily , economically and culturally. There are of course caveats and I believe Wattenberg does not really take into deep enough account the dark sides of the American reality.

I have been recommending this book to people for (I am shocked to learn) twenty-five years. I couldn't quite recall the title tonight when I was about to refer someone to it and was shocked to realize that I first read this in 1985.

It remains one of the best, if not the very best, book on how people lie with statistics that I have come across.

Wattenberg's overall theme was that much of the "bad news" you read and heard on a daily basis wasn't really "bad" at all. In fact, often good news was deliberately distorted by special interests in order to gain financially or otherwise.

With no particular animus, Wattenberg dissected the claims of the American Cancer Society (ACS) was making at the time in order to raise funds. Many of the claims were indeed frightening. Wattenberg shows that they were also false or, at a minimum, grossly distorted in order to serve a purpose.

For example, the ACS was claiming an "epidemic" of cancer. In fact, as Wattenberg brilliantly demonstrated, that "epidemic" was actually great news in its own way. Cancer is a disease very much associated with aging. Not all cancers, of course, but the ones ACS was claiming were "epidemic". In fact, because life expectancy had increased so dramatically, people were living to be old enough to develop those cancers.

As I said, I've been recommending this book for a quarter century as an example of how statistics are manipulated to serve allegedly "noble" causes, when in fact the true motive is rather base. There may be better out there now for this purpose, but I haven't found it yet.

Jerry