A revised and expanded version of the 1984 original, The Experts Speak collects hundreds of the dumbest predictions ever made by newspapers, critics, and business executives such as an L.A. surgeon's assessment that "smoking has a beneficial effect," a Decca Records exec's brainstorm that "groups of guitars are on their way out" after auditioning the Beatles, and BusinessWeek's insistence that the "Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself." Silly, but lots of fun.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A wonderful book.... The perfect gift for any authority on anything." -- UPI National Wire, August 11, 1984
"Because everyone likes to see an expert shown up, any reader should enjoy wallowing in The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation. by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky." -- Newsweek, September 10, 1984
"Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky... have just released an updated and expanded edition of their 1984 classic, The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation. It's 341 pages of bold and bad predictions, false assertions and mental misfires from the mouths of people who perhaps should have known better." -- Richard Morin, The Washington Post, November 15, 1998
"This book is irreverent, unfair, and subversive. What more could anyone ask for? -- Time, August 13, 1984
"What better time for... Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky to update their 1984 book, The Experts Speak.... Keep [it] handy -- by your favorite armchair or porcelain throne -- and flip through whenever you need a good laugh. -- USA Today, August 19, 1998
"[One] of the funniest and most ingenious...list books...I've ever seen. Best of all, the book functions as a true reference tool: from the creation of the Earth through evolution to economics, crime, war, baseball, Broadway, China, Churchill, personal health, poultry raising and unicorns, scholars and browsers alike will find that somebody, somewhere made a huge error of judgment and then, poor soul, said it out loud." -- Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle, September 17, 1984
From the Inside Flap
have the uneasy feeling the experts
are not . . . well, expert?
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929
"Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel."
--Irving Thalberg's warning to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone With the Wind
"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."
--Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962
"With over fifty foreign cars already on sale here the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."--Business Week, 1968
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
--President of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
"Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican who doesn't drool on stage."
--
From the Back Cover
Did you ever have the uneasy feeling the experts
are not . . . well, expert?
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Irving Fisher, professor of economics at Yale University, October 17, 1929
"Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel."
--Irving Thalberg's warning to Louis B. Mayer regarding Gone With the Wind
"We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out."
--Decca Recording Company executive, turning down the Beatles, 1962
"With over fifty foreign cars already on sale here the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big share of the market for itself."--Business Week, 1968
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."
--President of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
"Bill Clinton will lose to any Republican who doesn't drool on stage."
--The Wall Street Journal, in a 1995 editorial
The Experts Speak systematically catalogues, footnotes, and sets straight these and a couple of thousand other examples of expert misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and just plain lies. The experts have been wrong about everything under, including, and beyond the sun: time, space, the sexes, the races, the environment, economics, politics, crime, education, the media, history, and science. In this expanded and updated edition (now more error-filled than ever), we see just how much the experts don't know. But the book also goes deeper, presenting a through-the-looking-glass chronicle of human knowledge: the story of what was and is so, as seen through the story of what we wanted to and did believe.
About the Author
Christopher Cerf is the co-editor of The Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook and The Eighties: A Look Back at the Tumultuous Decade, 1980-1989. He is a former contributing editor to the National Lampoon, and he co-edited the newspaper parody Not the New York Times.
Victor Navasky is the publisher and editorial director of The Nation. He is the author of the American Book Award winner Naming Names and Kennedy Justice.
