The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit

Lying is pervasive. So pervasive that we have almost as many words for it as the Aleutians have for snow: prevaricating, fibbing, stretching the truth, of omission, of commission. Dividing her large topic into three sections – The Lies We Tell Each Other, The Lies We Tell Ourselves, and The Lies We All Agree to Believe – Raden’s book is as much about belief as about deceit. Buttressed by a winning mixture of history, psychology and science, Raden explores everything from swindles to cons to the long game to the big lie, including: -Why anyone still plays a shell game and gambles when they know the house is stacked against them -Goldbricking and the misleading nature of facts -Why faith and fraud are so closely connected -Hoaxes, hysteria and the madness of crowds -Why we’re all probably part of a pyramid scheme -How the truth can sometimes sound like a lie A zippy, funny, and informed history that adds fresh detail even to well-known stories (we all remember what Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast hoax was, but did you know that a number people committed suicide when they heard the aliens were upon us?), Raden’s book is more primer than morality play. As she writes in her introduction: Not that you’re gonna do it, but if you were gonna do it, here’s how you’d do it.