The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life [Hardcover]

Ralph Keyes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2004 | ISBN-10: 0312306482 | ISBN-13: 978-0312306489 | Edition: 1st

"Dishonesty inspires more euphemisms than copulation or defecation. This helps desensitize us to its implications. In the post-truth era we don't just have truth and lies but a third category of ambiguous statements that are not exactly the truth but fall just short of a lie. Enhanced truth it might be called. Neo-truth. Soft truth. Faux truth. Truth lite."

Deception has become the modern way of life. Where once the boundary line between truth and lies was clear and distinct, it is no longer so. In the post-truth era, deceiving others has become a challenge, a game, a habit. High-profile dissemblers compete for news coverage, from journalists like Jayson Blair and professors like Joseph Ellis to politicians (of all stripes), executives, and "creative" accountants.

Research suggests that the average American tells multiple lies on a daily basis, often for no good reason. Not a finger-wagging scolding, The Post-Truth Era is a combination of Ralph Keyes's investigative journalism and solid science. The result is a spirited exploration of why we lie about practically everything and the consequences such casual dishonesty has on society.

American society has become permeated from top to bottom by deception. Its consequences for the nature of public discourse, media, business, literature, academia, and politics are profound. With dry humor, passionate fervor, and deep understanding, Ralph Keyes takes us on a tour of a world where truth and honesty are no longer absolutes but mutable, fluid concepts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Casual duplicity picks at the threads of our social fabric," Keyes warns, and not just because it creates a greater tendency toward suspicion and mistrust. The consequences of letting people get away with lying can be severe: when somebody gets a job based on a bogus résumé, for example, he or she deprives those applicants who didn't falsify their work credentials. Keyes deplores what he dubs an "alt.ethics" that has made lying more acceptable, and he points to a variety of contributing factors in society, from postmodernism's denial of a literal truth to the ease of making unverified statements online. This largely anecdotal broadside essentially replays David Callahan's The Cheating Culture, though with fresher stories that address recent incidents like the Martha Stewart trial and the controversies surrounding several authors and journalists who have blurred fiction and nonfiction or simply fabricated their stories. Keyes takes a relatively nonpartisan approach; he criticizes Bill Clinton and Al Gore for their false statements, but attacks George W. Bush as the "quintessential baby boomer," accusing the president, and an entire generation, of a self-righteous refusal to confront, let alone speak, the truth. He doesn't offer much of a solution beyond a reaffirmation that lying is wrong and we shouldn't do it, advice that will surprise no one but may get some additional airplay in this heated election cycle.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Lying is so much a part of everyday life that everybody does it and everybody expects it, even while polls show Americans long for ethics and integrity in public officials. Keyes examines how we have come to the troubling trend toward the "routinization of dishonesty." In part one of this fascinating book, he provides a brief history of lying from the medieval ages to the present and explores the reasons behind the decline in ethics. Part two focuses on how modern culture inadvertently promotes lying by downplaying ethical issues while emphasizing emotional health and placing more emphasis on personal, professional, and national myth making. The result is the rise in high-profile liars among journalists, politicians, and corporate executives. Finally, Keyes examines the consequences of a culture that tolerates lying as a "no-fault transgression" with little or no consequences for the liar but a disturbing rise in suspicion throughout the culture. This is a thoughtful, often amusing look at the way we dodge the truth and tolerate dishonesty. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312306482
• ISBN-13: 978-0312306489
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,078,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ralph Keyes's sixteen books include the bestselling Is There Life After High School? which became a Broadway musical still produced in this country and abroad. His book Chancing It was a New York Times Notable Book, and The Courage to Write has been in print for 15 years. Keyes has discussed his work on Oprah, The Today Show, Tonight Show, ABC World News Tonight and 20/20 as well as NPR's Fresh Air, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, and On the Media. In addition to his books he has written hundreds of articles and essays for publications ranging from GQ to Good Housekeeping. An article Keyes co-authored for the Harvard Business Review won its prestigious McKinsey Award for Best Article of the Year. After graduating from Antioch College in 1967 Keyes spent was Assistant to the Publisher of Long Island's Newsday for two years. After that he spent a decade as a Fellow of the Center for Studies of the Person in La Jolla, California, then worked as a freelance writer in the Philadelphia area Keyes now lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio with his wife Muriel where he writes, lectures, and is a Trustee of the Antioch Writers' Workshop.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Entertaining Yet Challenging Read, March 6, 2005

By 

Charles J. Oleary (Arvada, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (Hardcover)

This book manages to be highly entertaining even while it requires readers to think hard about important questions about how we live and the kind of society to which we belong. As is usual in Keyes' work, he has researched every conceivable point of view and bit of evidence on the matter: we learn and wonder about casual lies of Hillary Clinton; why the lies of Reagan and Oliver North were forgiven and those of Al Gore were not; and get a bipartisan look at the styles of lying of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The book features the lies many political, judicial, literary, academic leaders have told and offers a fascinating analysis of the many reasons they may have done so. We learn that the average American tells one lie a day; that both sexes lie equally, but in different ways; and that an early Puritan method for catching liars was the "ultimate no win:" put under water, liars would float and therefore survive to be executed; truth tellers would sink and be vindicated though drowned.
The author of Is There Life After High School? and ten other works of honest, comprehensive and human commentaries on how we live today, Keyes combines humor with ethical concerns and compelling insight. The reader is treated to "A Brief History of Lying" which puts our current dilemma into historical context. The problem is not that we are the first generation to lie: it is that we are increasingly willing to believe that it doesn't matter if we lie; that a lie can be considered a "deeper truth" or that we no longer have to make distinctions between what is true and what can be made true. Keyes examines the consequences of an increased indifference to lying in terms of the trust that is required between people who need and depend on each other. Having taken us to the bleak awareness of the extent of untruth in our society, he shows compassion for the dilemma of those struggling with the truth. He relates examples of how individuals and communities opt for honesty and describes ways in which people can consciously relearn the value and satisfaction of being known as themselves rather than through false words and histories.

Reviewed by Charles O'Leary

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading For All Americans, November 11, 2004

By 

Evan Haglund "elhaglund" (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (Hardcover)

This well-researched and cogently written expose should be required reading for all Americans. Mr. Keyes utilizes both anecdotal evidence, and to the extent it is available, statistics and other evidence, to demonstrate that "truth" is a rapidly vanishing value in our current society. He then explains that the ramifications of this value decline are significant; the ability to be able to "presume" honesty is at the core of our relationships, both personal, financial, and professional.

Indeed, dishonesty is our society is so prevelant that the truth-teller is currently at a distinct disadvantage. The witness is a judicial proceeding who tells the truth without embellishment will be discounted, as judges and juries presume that the witness, like all those before them, has exagerrated. Similarly, the job applicant who does not fudge will be rejected, as fudging is now presumed.

Despite its weighty subject, Mr. Keyes' writing style is engaging. Moreover, the validity of Mr. Keyes' points are reinforced by everyday life. I highly recommend this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I bought this because of the title and the good reviews????????, August 17, 2008

By 

Dr. Don Malnati (LBK, Florida 34228) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life (Hardcover)

On page 250 he states, "When we tell someone the truth, we're suggesting we think they can handle it." Page 253 he states his own terrible bias, with his concept of truth, "if there is any hero against dishonesty it is the print media." I do not think so. The next 4 pages, fortunately the last, pound out, newsrooms are the heroes of truth. I do not think so. Authors of books tend to be truthful, maybe because of their more permanent nature. However newspaper writers aren't authors they are journalists. There are more politicians I trust than journalists.

For many years I had a local radio talk show on health. Many journalists taught me they were lazy, not bright and lived in their own world of Bias.

The author uses many techniques of "creative enhancement of the truth" he accuses others of using. He continues to accept and repeat "spin" without checking for accuracy. Lazy surface-journalism is his "truth". Headlines state the truth in one short line? He has a long section on how "liar's speech evolved" by cavemen. Was he there? Of course not. But he "knows" how it all started.

My first training was as a research scientist, it is hard work and often comes to wrong conclusions. This author obviously has no understanding about research. Instead his guesses are stated as "facts". Some psychologists are quoted, but they say, I think..., probably..., assumed..., seems to be..., etc. Somehow he pulls out facts. He carefully defines accuracy, then proceeds to be inaccurate. I read the 5 star reviews, but I love in-depth 1 star reviews. They save us from reading bad books. The Irony, this book is an example of dishonesty and deception.

My suggestion would be to instead read, How the news makes us dumbHow the News Makes Us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society]by Sommerville] [[ASIN:0060520841 Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News [[ASIN:0785261044 Journalistic Fraud: How The New York Times Distorts the News and Why It Can No Longer Be Trusted]by Bob Kohn] [[ASIN:0967286247 Conquering Deception] by Jef Nance] My hope is, I was of help to you.