![]() ![]() On the logical premise that “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb” Murray has obligingly bundled up all the taboo subjects, examined them and explained that they are not so frightening after all. ![]() ![]() We owe the inspiration for this book to Murray’s wife, who was so outraged by the attack he received at Middlebury College that she urged him to enter the fray on more contentious topics. Perhaps many other academics felt their noses put out of joint by a job well done. I enjoyed the powerful clarity of the findings, and ruefully acknowledged that “bell curve” was a snappier phrase than “standard normal distribution”. He had found a dataset and analysed it carefully, using histograms rather than correlation coefficients. I was bewildered by the passions it arose. Having “The Bell Curve” on my university library shelves 26 years ago seemed somewhat daring. He crunches data, and writes his conclusions in plain text, with helpful explanations about the harder statistical bits. He is an Enlightenment Regular Guy, who does not want Americans to lose ground, or be split apart or be cast asunder by imperious elites and their lucrative patterns of frustration. ![]() Charles Murray, a sociologist by background and a datanaut by inclination, has carved out a prominent place in American intellectual debate by the simple expedient of writing clearly about difficult subjects. ![]()
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