Customer Reviews

Myth Information: More Than 590 Popular Misconceptions, Fallacies, and Misbeliefs Explained!

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An excellent book to get you to start using some critical thinking skills. The author points out that what we think is so often is not. He did however pass on a myth that is not correct. He passed on the myth of glass being a liquid, when it isn't. Glass is an amorphous solid and not a liquid. It's crystalline structure clearly places as a solid and not a liquid. (Read S.R. Elliott's book, Amorphous Solids, An Introduction)This is but one source among many that will confirm this. I dare say that Mr. Varasdi confirms his own point! All in all a book well worth reading.

...but not enough references. Telling someone *how* you find information is just as important as telling them what the information is.

It's amazing how easily we accept as fact the many myths that pervade our culture. Varasdi explodes so many of these myths, and so convincingly, that he makes you wonder about other things "everyone" knows is "true." A great read, and a great book to read with others, so you can share your thoughts.

This book is not recommended. There are too many flaws to mention, as in the fact that the author actualy states some myths to be true (more on that later). Here are some flaws:

1. No bibliography. His "debunkings" of myths are arrogant, yet he never cites a source. Scholarary no-no.

2. He claims that "Ring Around the Rosies" was a reference to the Black Plague and popped up in 1347. Where he gets this I have no idea. The first mentioning of Ring Around the Rosies appeared in 1881, a far stretch from 1347. Also, how could "ashes" been a corruption of a plague victim sneezing? The ashes part wasn't added until the 20th century. This was the first version of "Ring Around the Rosies":

Ring a ring a rosie, A bottle full of posie, All the girls in our town, Ring for little Josie.

How that could relate to a plague is beyond me.

3. He claims the Baby Ruth bar is named after Grover Cleavland's daughter. There is no evidence for this claim and it has always been rather ambiguous.

4. Finally the author claims John Hanson was the first president of the US. Let's look at this. No one in Hanson's time called him the President, and John Hanson couldn't possibly have been the "first president of the United States," because neither the office of President of the United States nor the nation known as the United States of America was created until after he was dead.

Main source: ...

I was looking through this book recently because I had read and reviewed a book called Modeling Behaviors from Images of Reality in Television Narratives: Myth Information and Socialization by Tony R. DeMars. I think someone reading that book about influences of TV shows on childrens' behavior who doesn't quite grasp the idea of the myths we build our world around as reality would do well to read this book also--as well as a book that came out in the mid-80s called No Sense of Place, by Joshua Meyrowitz. Some people seem to have a hard time stepping back from their 'reality' and seeing these myths.

Too many older/mundane topics, no source info and at least five key errors. But besides this, "Myth" is an invaluable source of historical information.

The average American would learn a lot by reading it. Highlights include Christ not being Jesus's last name, the real effects of alcohol, snow not being white and many others. So many interesting things !!

To help the future reader, here are the errors:

- Blood in our veins is a "purplish blue". This is false - *all* blood is red. It's dark-red when returning to the lungs (before re-oxygenation) but red nonetheless.

- The Boston Tea Party was a response to the British undercutting Dutch tea prices. Actually, it was the anger over a looming British monopoly and yes, taxation without representation that did it. By undercutting, British tea would have been cheaper than other brands on the market..BUT..there was still a tax on it. This is because the Brits lowered, not removed, the taxes on tea. The taxation story is true after all - just incomplete.

- "Ring around a Rosie" started in 1347 and is associated with the Black Plague. Wrong. This version of the nursery rhyme's beginnings is a complete fabrication and the author simply went along with it. Like above, he used bad sources.

- John Hanson was the first President of the United States. Not true. Hanson was the third, not the first, President of the Confederation Congress. And the title he had included "in Congress assembled" - meaning a different posistion than what Washington had !!

- Crazy Horse led the charge against Custer in The Battle of Little Bighorn. There is no evidence of this. All we know is that Crazy Horse was a *participant* in the battle. He should not get more credit than this.

- Glass is more like a liquid than a solid. No scientist will confirm this. There are still unknown properties of glass - but we know that it's not a "liquid, molecularly" which the author claims.

- Karate began in India. Actually, it was the islands between Japan and China that did it. The people here were of Japanese heritage - so it's Japan after all.

Shouldn't have mentioned:

- The Baby Ruth candy bar was named after Grover Cleveland's daughter. Well, if you want to believe the company that made the bar - they historically said this. But a simple examination reveals that it was really named after Babe Ruth. Cleveland's daughter had been dead for 15 years before the introduction of the bar in 1921. And 1921 is right after Babe Ruth became a household name. Many have suggested over the years that the company chose "Baby" to avoid paying royalties to Ruth.

I don't think there's any more errors in the book - so watch out for these things (and many other old-obscure entries) and enjoy....