Commentary, reviews and other supporting material.


University of California Press site for "America's Top Pundits"

Buy Why America's Top Pundit Are Wrong from Amazon.com


Dangerous Pundits

Samuel Huntington
Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilisations
Thomas Friedman
Dinesh D'Souza
Robert D. Kaplan
Richard Herrnstein
Charles Murray
Randy Thornhill
Craig Palmer

Other critiques of dangerous pundits

Anthony Marx on Samuel Huntington

Robert Kagan on Robert Kaplan

Cheryl Brown Travis on Thornhill and Palmer

People For the American Way on Dinesh D'Souza

American Anthropological Association Public Anthropology Site

Matt Taibbi reviews Thomas Friedman

Norma Solomon reviews Thomas Friedman

David Corn discusses Thomas Friedman and other Neo-cons

New York Review of Books on Thomas Friedman


Commentary and reviews

"The punditocracy are our modern day mythmakers. The anthropologists assembled in this collection deftly debunk their myths and make a passionate case for the importance of anthropology to public debate. The authors present sustained, intelligent, and often biting and humorous criticisms of some of the most influential recent popular writings on social science and international relations. This is a very important book."
Bill Maurer, author of Recharting the Caribbean

"From an anthropological standpoint, the world increasingly looks as if it is led by glib, but uninformed, insensitive dolts. In this volume, the authors fight back against the pundits whose influential publications presume the same expertise as anthropologists. They underscore the overgeneralizations, prejudices, false reasoning, and inaccuracies of these popular authors and in doing so provide a useful corrective."
William Beeman, author of The Study of Culture at a Distance

"This volume is a bold attempt, in language as accessible as the reigning rhetorics, to remake the terms of public debate, to lessen the fear of the primordial, and to allow Americans to understand better the challenges, the errors, and the possibilities of what is being done elsewhere in their name."
George Marcus, co-author of Anthropology as Cultural Critique

"This 'must read' volume is Public Anthropology at its best. It invokes the anthropological veto, brings in voices from the margins, and talks back to society's new tribe of talking chiefs--the spin doctors, myth-makers, and pundits who reduce the richness and complexity of global and national dilemmas into bite-size and dangerous platitudes."
Nancy Scheper-Hughes, author of Death Without Weeping: the Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil

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Last update: 01/22/05