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1 of 1 members found this review helpful.What the?
“I got the audio CD version of this book at a book sale for only $1, but I still feel cheated. I thought with a title like "On Bull***t" , it had to be funny, or at least provide some interesting insights about BS. On my first attempt to listen to it, I made it to track 5 or 6 before dozing off. Thank goodness I wasn't driving. I thought maybe it was just me, that I was missing the joke or not appreciating some of the creative insights that made this book a best seller. The next night I started the CD over again, hoping I could better appreciate this book if I just tried harder. Again, I had difficulty staying awake, but this time I made it to the end. I just don't get it. The writing is repetitive and wordy, in the style of something written 100 years ago. There are no great new insights into BS - just some rather obvious observations on what it is and how it differs from lying and bluffing. I am hoping the author was just pulling my chain, feeding me a line of BS about the meaning and importance of BS, using as many long sentences with big words as possible so as to make it obvious. Either that or it is just an extremely boring book. I can't recommend it.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-06.
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the program of producing "BS" in large organizations
“The Fable of the Sharks
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-21.
This fine distinction between lying and "BSing", and the program
of producing "BS" has been brilliantly applied to the dynamics of
power in large organizations in "The Fable of the Sharks" by Eduard
Gracia who claims "For each and every one of us who try to make a
living in this our uncertain world, the most insidious if not the
biggest danger is that of failing to distinguish between fact and
"BS", between information and manipulation."
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1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Thin, and Lacking Academic Depth or Insight
“I was really disappointed in this "book," which is basically just a pretentiously-written, long-winded few paragraphs on semantics, not philosophy. It is hardly academic, and offered no valuable insights. Whoever decided to publish this is a genius, however. Great marketing. The best thing I can say about this piece is that it's the best example there is of BS, which I guess basically helps prove its one lone point: we're all suckers. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-19. -
Insightful crassness
“Despite the stifled giggles this book's subject and title are sure to produce, Frankfurt gives the reader, in a very short work, a working definition of bulls&*t and why there is so much of it. Frankfurt defines it as a "lack of connection to a concern with truth- [an] indifference to how things really are..." and that the bulls*&ter's "indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to." In fact, Frankfurt contends that the bulls&*ter doesn't even have to be lying! While this may seem like common knowledge, considering how much bulls*&t is out there I like it that someone has taken the time to define it. My only criticism is that with such a small work (67 pages in my edition) Frankfurt should have taken one or two more pages to summarize his previous definitions of bulls*&t. Instead, you have to search through his work to find the definitions. However, having read philosophical works by Kant and other myself, Frankfurt's exclusion of this is not wholly unexpected in my mind.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-07-08. -
3 of 7 members found this review helpful.
How does this rank so high?
“I own this book. I have read that the author was surprised that a publisher wanted to release this as a stand alone book. For what it is, and for what it cost it is okay.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-02-20.
That it should come up in the top four responses for the topic Philosophy is an embarrassment both to the Author and Amazon's search engine. ”
