But What If We're Wrong?

Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past

By: Chuck Klosterman

Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Chuck Klosterman

New York Times bestselling author Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music, five hundred years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or—weirder still—widely known, but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we “overrate” democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we’ve reached the end of knowledge?

Klosterman visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We’re Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers—George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others—interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It’s a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It’s about how we live now, once “now” has become “then.”

WTF Chuck?

Any additional comments?

Dear Chuck,
I was delighted to see a new release from you pop up. And I hear your words in the unique style that is all your own, but instead of your familiar snarky nasally voice, it's a text to speech bot modeled after one of the spice girls. This voice is completely out of place and I keep rewinding it in my head to imagine what it sounds like when you say it.
Next time please just narrate it yourself, even if it takes longer.

Meandering at points, but interesting

Klosterman takes a look at our present presumptions about music, literature, politics, and science and asks the title question "What if we're wrong?" What if The Beatles are not going to be remembered as the greatest rock band? What if football dies away? What or who would replace them?

It's a fun thought experiment, but one that ultimately ended up being too long. I frequently found my mind wander away from the book, and even as I read it my attention was drawn to other things.

Unfortunately, even immediately after finishing the book, there are parts that I have forgotten already. I think a large part of this is because this is a novel with no consequence. Yes, it is important to remain inquisitive about the world; however, this book read like a super-long clickbait article.

There are some interesting theories in here, but I wonder if I'll even remember them when I look back on my 2016 booklist, let alone in the murky future Klosterman writes about.

His best work yet!

an addicting, provocative and well researched piece of media archeology, pop science and cultural anthropology!

Wish Klosterman self-narrated!

This was good but would be even better of Klosterman narrated it himself. The narrator is fine though.

Chuck is back with greatness

Loved this book! Amazing connections and narrative flow, connecting everything from Elvis to tsunamis. Wish Klosterman had read it though, his moments in the narration (very beginning and end) add delicious personality to the text. Download this book!