The B.S. Factor

About the Book

Fakery and hypocrisy in American communications are the subjects of this outspoken—and hilarious—book. Uncovering our thought-pollution problem for perhaps the first time, Arthur Herzog exposes Executalk ("name of the game" for "point" or "purpose," "ball-park estimate" for "rough guess"), Quote Facts (opinions made to seem like facts by virtue of being quoted), and Complex Complex (the compulsion to make things more complicated than they need to be), to mention only a few of the current crimes against logic and language. The perpetrators of these atrocities include Fadthinkers, Word Mincers, Sci-Speakers, Copy Cant-ers, and Anything Authorities, those who, having succeeded in one field, appear on TV talk shows as experts on everything else. Without the B.S. Factor, success in America is almost impossible, says Herzog, and he goes on to call for a new breed of "radical skeptics" to clear away the B.S. that is now engulfing our country.

"An entertaining and witty attack."
—Publishers Weekly

"Mr. Herzog has diagnosed the sickness brilliantly."
—The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Arthur Herzog is an award-winning novelist, non-fiction writer and journalist, renowned for his best-selling novels The Swarm, Orca (both made into popular movies), Make Us Happy, Heat and IQ 83, hailed by the British press as one of the best science fiction works ever written.

His non-fiction best sellers include Vesco, which Publishers Weekly hailed as "A brilliantly researched story…one of the year’s remarkable biographies" and The Woodchipper Murder. A New Yorker, avid reader, and world traveler, Herzog continues to write fiction and non-fiction books.