Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads (Hardcover)

by Joel Best (Author) "In the summer of 1958, our parents bought hula hoops, one for my younger brother and one for me..." (more)
Key Phrases: pendulum image, new management scheme, fads spread, Professor Alice, Professor Bertram, Teaching Math (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Sociologist Best (Damned Lies and Statistics) dissects the dangerous hula hoops of business, medicine, science and education in this light exposition on institutional fads. According to Best, American attitudes toward progress (colored by optimism, competitiveness, a belief in positive change and a fear of being seen as old-fashioned) serve as kindling to the fire of the next big cure, technological revolution, business management secret or teaching method. Best delineates stages of the fad life-cycle ("emerging," "surging," then finally "purging") and identifies conditions and players essential to creating a successful fad (a problem needs a solution, which is then proposed by originators and pushed by promoters), and though he makes an intuitive and immensely readable case, his book suffers from a dearth of hard data and case studies (the hypothetical "Dr. Michael" and "Professor Alice" used to illustrate Best's points feel contrived and simple). Similarly, his five rules for "fad-proofing" will work well for an individual, but those who adhere to his principles and swim against the tide in a large organization may find themselves reading this book in the soup line.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Best is author of Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists (2001) and several other books that take a fresh look at social trends. Although the title might suggest a whimsical look at the pop-culture fads that we all love to make fun of, this book focuses on a much lesser- but more insidious version: the institutional fad. Institutional fads occur in business, education, government, and medicine whenever normally rational people embrace novel solutions just because they are the latest, greatest thing. Since the definition of a fad is something that catches on and then quickly fades away, these passing solutions waste a lot of resources and can even leave damage in their wake. Some institutional fads that may not be all they were cracked up to be include multiple-personality-disorder diagnoses, business management systems such as Six Sigma, and the No Child Left Behind program. Best examines the life cycle and dynamics of fads and suggests some basic adages for becoming "fad-proof," such as "remember last time." David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (April 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520246268
• ISBN-13: 978-0520246263
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #573,512 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fairly obvious observations, but well organized, February 21, 2007

By	Z. Freeman "Zach" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Flavor of the Month is a 162 page essay/novel about institutional fads: why they exist, their different stages, and then a dissection on their pros and cons.

Although most of the observations are fairly obvious (institutional fads happen in cycles, etc) the information is well organized and presented. The major drawback to the book is that Best relies solely on "what if" stories. He creates fictional characters and places them in fictional situations to demonstrate how an institutional fad could begin, spread, and then fade away. The information would have been a lot more compelling if he were actually dealing with facts.

The book includes several copies of email forwards and other such jokes that you have probably seen repeatedly, and they get a little old, but add length to the book, which is their point I think.

I found Flavor of the Month easy to get through fairly quickly, but I'm not sure that I came away any more knowledgeable than before I opened the book. We all know that institutional fads happened, and I would rather have seen more examples of them happening in real life than a brief example of how they "could" effect a business.

19 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment., April 4, 2006

By	Putney Mountain (CO USA) - See all my reviews

I had read one of his previous books and thought it was okay. I was expecting this to have some entertaining examples of smart people falling for intellectual fads and some insights as to how that happens. Unfortunately, no such luck. All of the examples are ones that are widely known and there is really no insightful analysis. The book is quite short - all of the interesting content would barely fill a New Yorker article - and one gets the impression that this was just put together over a few weekends. I would have to say that the content is uniformly at the junior high school level. Save your money, no entertainment or enlightenment here.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars lazyreaders.com book club selection for April 2006, June 26, 2006

By	Danny Brassell (Redondo Beach, CA) - See all my reviews

So what if this book just came out, and I tend to always read books that are sent to me from publishers for free? While Joel Best can often bore with statistics (he wrote the wonderful "Damned Lies and Statistics"), his point of this book is intriguing: Americans often fall for scams. He is not talking about the guys that buy Ab Rollers sold on late night infomercials (which I own, pitifully). Best is talking about how smart people in business, medicine and education cling to the next 7-step approach or easy-to-use carb diet. Education, in my opinion, suffers from this disease more than any other profession, as the pendulum has swung most recently to drilling letter sounds and endlessly assessing students as a part of the government's "No Child Left Untested" program. If nothing else, this book will get you thinking. You can read an anecdote from my own teaching experiences on the April 2006 blog of my website, www.lazyreaders.com, which archives awesome adult, young adult and children's books that are under 250 pages.