The Bell Curve Debate (Paperback)

by Russell Jacoby (Author), Naomi Glauberman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman have edited a book on race, class, and intelligence that will stand for the foreseeable future as the authoritative guide to the extraordinary controversy ignited by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's incendiary bestseller, The Bell Curve. The editors have gathered together both the best of recent reviews and essays, and salient documents drawn from the curious history of this heated debate. The Bell Curve Debate captures the fervor, anger, and scope of an almost unprecedented national argument over the very idea of democracy and the possibility of a tolerant, multiracial America. It is an essential companion and answer to The Bell Curve, and provides scholarship and polemic from every point of view. It is a must-read for the informed citizen in search of all the views fit to print.

From the Inside Flap
Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman have edited a book on race, class, and intelligence that will stand for the foreseeable future as the authoritative guide to the extraordinary controversy ignited by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's incendiary bestseller, The Bell Curve. The editors have gathered together both the best of recent reviews and essays, and salient documents drawn from the curious history of this heated debate. The Bell Curve Debate captures the fervor, anger, and scope of an almost unprecedented national argument over the very idea of democracy and the possibility of a tolerant, multiracial America. It is an essential companion and answer to The Bell Curve, and provides scholarship and polemic from every point of view. It is a must-read for the informed citizen in search of all the views fit to print.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (March 28, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812925874
• ISBN-13: 978-0812925876
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #647,525 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real thought provoker consisting of great essays., August 10, 1997

By A Customer

While the Bell Curve has stirred up a whirlwind of controversy, the Bell Curve Debate is actually the better of the two books. This book has great rebuttals by the likes Stephen Jay Gould, Howard Gardner, Carl Rowan and many more. It even includes some of the classic papers on these matters such "On Breeding Good Stock" by Karl Pearson. Given a choice between reading the Bell Curve or the Bell Curve Debate, the Bell Curve Debate is the clear choice.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Question the validity of the IQ tests used, May 19, 2009

By	Sylvia Lawrence (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Do you think Africans who have never seen pen and paper would know the answer to, "Who is Catherine the Great?" or maybe "What is the speed of light?", or "Who wrote Faust?" The Weis test used by the authors of the Bell Curve is full of questions like those (the ones I mentioned are from the test). Quoting their conclusions is building a house on quick sands.

You have to be either a pseudo-intellectual or a racist to realize that IQ and knowledge are two very different things and yet use a test that has several parts based purely on knowledge, testing no mental complexity at all. Everybody without formal education would score low on the Weis test and so will people with creative, atypical, critical thinking since there are many open ended questions with multiple right answers but only 1-2 options in the answer key.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good resource on a complicated topic, December 11, 1999

By	Al Kihano (Iskandria) - See all my reviews

It's hard to imagine a better or more balanced collection of essays on the topic of intelligence testing and _The Bell Curve_. The essays present various sides of the debate, featuring perspectives from psychologists, biologists, historians, and theorists. Especially illuminating were sections dealing with _TBC_'s authors' funding source, a clandestine eugenics think-tank in New York. Also, you can find some good pro-Bell Curve articles here, although the bias certainly seems to be in favour of con- (a relection, I believe, of the academic consensus_.