Books about Distort from Amazon.com

"Provocative enough to make you start questioning your each and every action."—Entertainment Weekly

The brain's power is confirmed and touted every day in new studies and research And yet we tend to take our brains for granted, without suspecting that those masses of hard-working neurons might not always be working for us. Cordelia Fine introduces us to a brain we might not want to meet, a brain with a mind of its own. She illustrates the brain's tendency toward self-delusion as she explores how the mind defends and glorifies the ego by twisting and warping our perceptions. Our brains employ a slew of inborn mind-bugs and prejudices, from hindsight bias to unrealistic optimism, from moral excuse-making to wishful thinking—all designed to prevent us from seeing the truth about the world and the people around us, and about ourselves..
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Modern historical study of the Gospels seems to give us a new portrait of Jesus every spring, just in time for Easter. The more idiosyncratic the portrait, the more it departs from the traditional view of Jesus, the more attention it gets in the popular media. Why are scholars so prone to fabricate Jesus? Why is the public so eager to accept their claims without question? What methods and assumptions predispose scholars to distort the record? Is there a more sober approach to finding the real Jesus?

Renowned evangelical New Testament expert Craig A. Evans takes an evenhanded, informed approach to these fascinating and timely questions.

Market/Audience

• Professors and students
• Pastors
• Thoughtful laypeople

Features and Benefits

• Written by Craig A. Evans, widely known for his contributions to the study of the historical Jesus.
• Craig A. Evans is frequently consulted for television shows regarding the historical Jesus (Dateline, National Geographic special on the Gospel of Judas).
• Suggests right use and wrong use of critical methods, including text criticism, cultural studies and Gnostic Gospels.
• Offers a sober perspective on recent controversial books such as Misquoting Jesus, The Jesus Papers, The Jesus Dynasty and the Gospel of Judas.

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In his nearly thirty years at CBS News, Emmy Award winner Bernard Goldberg earned a reputation as one of the preeminent reporters in the television news business When he looked at his own industry, however, he saw that the media far too often ignored their primary mission: to provide objective, disinterested reporting. Again and again he saw that the news slanted to the left. For years, Goldberg appealed to reporters, producers, and network executives for more balanced reporting, but no one listened. The liberal bias continued.

Now, breaking ranks and naming names, he reveals a corporate news culture in which the closed-mindedness is breathtaking and in which entertainment wins over hard news every time.

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This book is a sweeping indictment of the legal profession in the realm of constitutional interpretation. The adversarial, advocacy-based American legal system is well suited to American justice, in which one-sided arguments collide to produce a just outcome. But when applied to constitutional theorizing, the result is selective analysis, overheated rhetoric, distorted facts, and overstated conclusions. Such wayward theorizing finds its way into print in the nation's over 600 law journals - professional publications run by law students, not faculty or other professionals - and peer review is almost never used to evaluate worthiness. The consequences of this system are examined through three timely cases: the presidential veto, the "unitary theory" of the president's commander-in-chief power, and the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms." In each case, law reviews were the breeding ground for defective theories that won false legitimacy and political currency. This book concludes with recommendations for reform..
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Conservative talk show hosts and newspaper columnists have made an industry out of incessantly deriding the American left, citing liberals for everything from moral decay to bad economic policy to a soft approach on terrorism. Often these accusations are bound in book form and sell quite well. Only one problem, according to Salon.com and New York Observer writer Joe Conason: the charges they're leveling just aren't true. In Big Lies, Conason dissects 10 of the most persistent, and--according to him--glaringly incorrect, arguments made by conservatives. Each chapter begins with a quotation ("Liberals control the media and misuse their influence to promote left-wing politics," "Conservatives are the only true champions of free enterprise"), which is then picked apart using statistical evidence and detailed historical research and rejected. The modern right wing, in the opinion of Conason, is not the bastion of virtue and defender of the common man it claims to be. Rather, it is a calculating and shrewdly efficient group of propagandists fueled by revenues generated by a system that rewards cronyism. Granted, it doesn't take much to deflate the bombast of shrill political talk show hosts whose very living depends on making shocking accusations about public figures, a couple of raw facts usually does the trick, but Conason offers more than simple refutation, going deeper to challenge the presumptions that generate such platitudes. And he navigates a highly readable and informative writing style that feels more substantive than Molly Ivins and Al Franken but still a lot wittier than Noam Chomsky. Many of Conason's arguments, like those of his foes, naturally come down to matters of opinion, and published material can readily be found to back up nearly any perspective. Nonetheless, he presents clear and logical points, and his thinking is well supported by both the historical record and empirical data. Accusing Joe Conason of lies (of any size) would certainly be a difficult task. --John Moe.
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For over a hundred years, the New York Times has purported to present straight news and hard facts. But, as Bob Kohn shows with absolute clarity, the founders' original vision has been hijacked, and today, instead of straight news, readers are given mere editorial under the pretense of objective journalism. Kohn shows point by point the methods by which the Times' mission has been subverted by the present management-routinely slanting the presentation of the facts in leads, headlines, and placement; utilizing polls, labels, and loaded language to convey particular views, not genuine news; and staffing the newsroom with hacks who manipulate information to further a leftist agenda. Kohn shows how such fraudulence directly corrupts hundreds of news agencies across the world; and by revealing all their methods of manipulation, he teaches readers how to decipher the slants in even the subtlest of cases, providing an entertaining and enlightening lesson in fraud-busting..
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