Books about Objectivity from Amazon.com

Sponsored studies have become America's most powerful and popular tool of persuasion Tainted Truth shows that much of what we learn from them is false. Although the studies and surveys wear the guise of objective science, their findings almost invariably reflect their sponsors' intentions.

In this important and provocative book, Cynthia Crossen reveals how the manufacturers of silicone breast implants did not disclose information regarding the dangers of the implants, how the demise of the cloth-diaper industry was influenced by questionable statistics paid for by Procter & Gamble -- the leading supplier of disposable diapers, and how even the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court was influenced by fast and biased polls..
Price: $7.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The story of a man who said he would stop the motor of the world--and did. This novel is the setting for the author's philosophy of Objectivism .
Price: $69.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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.

.
Price: $2.81 [Notify me when price goes down.]

James Bowman provides a scintillating and fast-paced anatomy of the mainstream media self-generated demise. The Mind of the Media looks behind the headlines to examine mainstream media's governing myths. Writing with acerbic wit, Bowman shows how the mainstream media's embrace of a spurious notion of objectivity, combined with its addiction to scandal, and an unshakable conviction of its own moral superiority have done irreparable damage to the media's public authority..
Price: $9.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In this book, now published in 10 languages, a preeminent intellectual historian examines the profound changes in ideas about the nature of history and historiography Georg G. Iggers traces the basic assumptions upon which historical research and writing have been based, and describes how the newly emerging social sciences transformed historiography following World War II. The discipline's greatest challenge may have come in the last two decades, when postmodern ideas forced a reevaluation of the relationship of historians to their subject and questioned the very possibility of objective history. Iggers sees the contemporary discipline as a hybrid, moving away from a classical, macrohistorical approach toward microhistory, cultural history, and the history of everyday life. The new epilogue, by the author, examines the movement away from postmodernism towards new social science approaches that give greater attention to cultural factors and to the problems of globalization..
Price: $17.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In two previous books, Janet Malcolm explored the hidden sides of, respectively, institutional psychoanalysis and Freudian biography. In this book, she examines the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit as her larger-than-life example -- the lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision, a book about the crime -- she delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation. When the text first appeared, as a two-part article in The New Yorker, its thesis seemed so radical and its irony so pitiless that journalists across the country reacted as if stung.

Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case -- the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial -- Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative -- and always on the edge of the reader's consciousness -- is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness. The Journalist and the Murderer derives from and reflects many of the dominant intellectual concerns of our time, and it will have a particular appeal for those who cherish the odd, the off-center, and the unsolved..
Price: $7.75 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This popular book on applying critical thinking techniques to standard concepts in psychology and teaches how to recognize and critically appraise pseudoscience. In particular, this book provides tips on evaluating claims that arise in discussions of psychology in the media and self-help literature. By boldly examining common misconceptions in psychology, this book helps readers become more critical and discriminating consumers of psychological information. For anyone interested in psychology..
Price: $30.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]