Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t

By: Tom Phillips

Narrated by: Tom Phillips

This is a book about TRUTH—and all the ways we try to avoid it—from the bestselling author of Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up.

We live in a “post-truth” world, we’re told. But was there ever really a golden age of truth-telling? Or have people been lying, fibbing and just plain bullsh*tting since the beginning of time?

Tom Phillips, editor of a leading independent fact-checking organization, deals with this question every day. In Truth, he tells the story of how we humans have spent history lying to each other—and ourselves—about everything from business to politics to plain old geography. Along the way, he chronicles the world’s oldest customer service complaint, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835 and the surprisingly dishonest career of Benjamin Franklin.

Sharp, witty and with a clear-eyed view of humanity’s checkered past, Truth reveals why people lie—and how we can cut through the bullsh*t.

A fun, informative book

I first listened to the authors book on conspiracies, where certain conspiracy theories originated, and how they spread– that was a fun listen

The history of bull&$)( was likewise and enjoyable, historically, interesting, and well read text.

I will look forward to listening to anything further from this author

Phillips’ Analysis of Types of Falsehoods

This book did a fairly good job of describing the kinds of falsehoods that we encounter daily. My only criticism lies in his habit of citing five examples where, in my opinion, two would have been more than adequate. The examples were often quite interesting but this Reader sometimes got a little bored with the details.

Actually, halfway through, I skipped three or four chapters once I saw where he was going and went on to the last, helpfully named Conclusion. After finishing, I went back and caught up with parts of the missed examples.

I was most impressed with his rarely held theory that maybe we should just accept as fact that we’ll probably never really be guaranteed Truth in many areas and that the best way forward is to study and learn the characteristics of Bulls**t so to better detect it. According to Phillips, that will be a more fun and interesting task as well.

All in all, a good study of a very important but slippery concept that each of us must master in some way. Three and a half stars. ***+1/2*

Not at all what I anticipated

So what?
That’s what I was thinking when I finished. There were a few interesting tidbits, although the majority of examples were snoozers. I was hoping for a few more contemporary examples of blatant dishonesty that the general public accept as fact.

It was a good idea to have the author narrative the book. He’s probably the only one who could show any enthusiasm for the dull vignettes proving dishonesty.