Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Politics and Current Events In "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials," Wendy Kaminer sifts her way through pop- spirituality "classics" like "The Celestine Prophecy" and "Conversations with God," attends New Age seminars, and points out the inaccuracy of claims by religious faithfuls that the "secular media" mocks their beliefs. American culture champions faith, she argues, even--increasingly--over critical thinking. But her book is not just an assault on religion: Kaminer also attacks purveyors of junk science, the influence of the recovered-memory movement on both feminism and the American court system, and the "cyberspacy" claims made by boosters of technological progress. In the following essay, written exclusively for Amazon.com, Kaminer offers suggestions for further reading of the levelheaded variety. The book featured in this e-mail is "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety," by Wendy Kaminer. You can find more information about it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067944243X/entertainmentsit ****** "Recommended Reading for Rationalists" by Wendy Kaminer Respect for rationalism may have declined in recent years, with various forms of millennial fever infecting American culture, but rationalists continue writing books. Indeed, the prevalence of irrationalism is perversely inspiring: at least it provides us with fresh material. Sex is a perennial source of craziness for most of us, but federal judge Richard Posner bravely reasons his way through our notions of sexuality and its legal and social regulation in the appropriately titled "Sex and Reason." Posner, author of some 30 books, is a prolific (and erudite) writer by any standard; considering that his day job is chief justice of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, his output is incredible. Here, drawing on rational-choice theory and multidisciplinary literature on sex, Posner aims in part to "expound a specific economic theory of sexuality." You may find the mere notion of a cost-benefit analysis of sexual behavior disconcerting, or you may dispute his particular notions of costs and benefits. You are likely to argue with this book--that's one of the pleasures of reading it. Posner is, in any case, a libertarian, and his rational-choice analysis would generate much more sexual justice than the unreasoned moralism of so many legislators and judges. Among the most grievous recent injustices of sex and unreason is the spate of wrongful child abuse prosecutions in the 1980s and early '90s generated by hysteria about abuse and "repressed-memory syndrome." A reasoned analysis of these cases came late for people wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for crimes that probably never occurred, but the rest of us can learn much from several excellent books about them. "Satan's Silence," by journalist Debbie Nathan and attorney Michael Snedeker, chronicles the criminal prosecutions and analyzes the cultural obsession with ritual abuse, beginning with the notorious McMartin Preschool case in California. In "Remembering Satan," Lawrence Wright details the awful case of Paul Ingram, accused by his daughters of satanic ritual abuse on the basis of allegedly recovered memories. Effectively brainwashed by his interrogators into falsely confessing, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. "Making Monsters," by psychologist Richard Ofshe and journalist Ethan Watters, exposes the myth of repressed memories and the crimes of recovered-memory therapists who drugged, hypnotized, and institutionalized troubled patients and convinced them that their fantasies were true. Repressed-memory therapists essentially invented a disease, multiple personality disorder (MPD), which supposedly results from child abuse. In "Creating Hysteria," Joan Acocella, a New Yorker staff writer, deftly describes the evolution of an imaginary epidemic that eventually claimed many actual victims: thousands of women told by their therapists that they suffered from MPD, many of whom were driven crazy by the diagnosis and treatment. The emergence of MPD and popular beliefs about the ubiquity of child abuse, spawned by the recovery movement, have all contributed to our frequently criticized cult of victimhood. I have often wondered about victimhood's relationship to the image of the Holocaust, and in "The Holocaust in American Life," Peter Novick explains it. Employing his considerable powers of reason and knowledge of history, Novick, a history professor at the University of Chicago, shows how our conception of the Holocaust evolved, analyzing its role in Jewish identity and American cultural discourse. This is an incisive, controversial book that some find provocative, but from a rationalist perspective it's eminently sensible. --Wendy Kaminer's other books include "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional," "It's All the Rage," and "True Love Waits." Featured in this e-mail: "Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials" by Wendy Kaminer http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067944243X/entertainmentsit "Sex and Reason" by Richard Posner http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674802802/entertainmentsit "Satan's Silence" by Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465071813/entertainmentsit "Remembering Satan" by Lawrence Wright http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679755829/entertainmentsit "Making Monsters" by Richard Ofshe and Ethan Watters http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520205839/entertainmentsit "Creating Hysteria" by Joan Acocella http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0787947946/entertainmentsit "The Holocaust in American Life" by Peter Novick http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395840090/entertainmentsit ****** You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Nonfiction section at Nonfiction ******
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