Ariely writes in a conversational tone one might associate with a popular teacher, providing readers with a working...
Ariely (Psychology/Psychology and Behavioral Economics/Duke Univ.; The Upside of Irrationality, 2010, etc.) explores how honest we are, how honest we think we are and every white lie in the middle.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the greatest concentration of dishonest Americans can be found in the Washington, D.C., area. While it's true that our leaders provide us with egregious examples of dishonesty, a more nuanced look at how we define the concept reveals that our moral compasses may be less dependable than we would like to believe. Ariely's prior books regarding irrationality flow into his research around what motivates people's dishonesty. He argues against the idea that deciding whether or not to cheat is fueled by a cost/benefit analysis. He also finds that the notion of the decision-making process being largely internal is also inaccurate and shares examples of corporate culture's enabling of dishonesty. It's far simpler for the media to identify the Kenneth Lay in the story than to explain how hundreds of employees—unlikely to all be maliciously and intentionally undermining the financial security of thousands of people—could participate in an organizational structure that rewards the bending of the rules. Lawyers round up on billable hours, and those who stick to an honest assessment of how much they work are culled from the firm come evaluation time. Ariely also argues convincingly that society’s move toward a cashless society is lessening the moral impact when a few people fudge the numbers slightly—it eventually adds up to billions of dollars in losses. The author dissects dishonesty in schools, relationships and workplaces and examines institutional and cultural safeguards and their levels of effectiveness.
Ariely writes in a conversational tone one might associate with a popular teacher, providing readers with a working knowledge of what shapes our ethics—or lack thereof.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-218359-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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