The Book of Common Fallacies: Falsehoods, Misconceptions, Flawed Facts, and Half-Truths That Are Ruining Your Life

This is really two books shuffled together: Ward's list of mistaken ideas (some of them common only in the 1600's -- although that per se does not prevent the gullible from perpetuating them today, viz. astrology), and Edward's purported update of pop fad beliefs. Ward is the better writer, although some of his information has been proven wrong by science. But Edwards, after a rant to enforce a distinction among errors, misinformation, myths, deception and false logic (the only denotation she accepts), proceeds to confuse them and print mistakes, bad reasoning, and data contradicted by history in poor English with grammar mistakes! She prints unclear relations, false data, confuses hypotheses with theories, uses plural verbs with singular subjects (& vice versa), mistakes amount for number, whom for who, and is often vague about what she is criticising. The book is often "entertaining", but not a valuable reference.

I bought the audiobook to listen to as I was driving. There are so many facts being stated that I had to keep repeating to get all the information. Since I found the information interesting and useful I bought a copy of the paperback to keep as a reference. There is also a Kindle version, but I am more oriented towards indexes on paper so I cannot address the Kindle version.

I bought this book in paperback format for an elderly woman who believes that everything she hard and sees on TV is true. She seemed to like it.

Certainly buy this or have it with you in some other way. It's terrific.

This is a great book to leave on your coffee table (or in the bathroom). It's amazing what you can learn in a few short minutes!

lots of interesting bits

It's kind of fun but some of their facts are off. Like declaring 'Going outside with wet hair and you'll catch a cold' a fallacy, declaring that you need the cold virus. A couple of decades ago the realized that the cold virus is usually around and stress lowers your resistance to it, and going outside with wet hair can cause stress if it makes you cold.But it's a fun book to listen to and the seem to have most of their facts right.

Until I read this book, I had no idea that how Aristotle died was a common fallacy. Serioulsy? (And the sources Ward relies on -- who can tell?) There's a general lack of sources here, and hence no way to judge how accurate are the assertions, even the interesting parts of the book (and there are some). Granted, Ward was writing for a different time and place, but this book needs a serious overhaul. Too much of what's here no longer qualifies as a common fallacy.