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Is anyone out there interested in buying a pile of copies of my Liars and Outliers for a giveaway and book signing at the RSA Conference? I can guarantee enormous crowds at your booth for as long as there are books to give away. This could also work for an after-hours event.
Please let me know. I can get you a great bulk order price with my publisher.
I was reviewed in Science:
Thus it helps to have a lucid and informative account such as Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers. The book provides an interesting and entertaining summary of the state of play of research on human social behavior, with a special emphasis on trust and trustworthiness.
[…]
Free from preoccupations and personal attachments to any of the scientific disciplines working on the topic, he has compiled a well-structured overview of what research can tell us about how trust and trustworthiness accumulate (although some academic readers may find their publications presented in an unexpected context). This he enlivens by adding real-life experiences on how to build trust and keep trustworthiness alive.
I am amused by the parenthetical comment.
I usually don’t post reviews of Liars and Outliers—they’re all here—but I am particularly proud of this one.
Two of my books can be seen in the background in CBS’ new Sherlock Holmes drama, Elementary. Copies of Schneier on Security and Secrets & Lies are prominently displayed on Sherlock Holmes’ bookshelf. You can see them in the first few minutes of the pilot episode. The show’s producers contacted me early on to ask permission to use my books, so it didn’t come as a surprise, but it’s still a bit of a thrill.
Here’s a listing of all the books visible on the bookshelf.
Liars and Outliers (along with two other books: Kip Hawley’s memoir of his time at the TSA and Against Security, by Harvey Molotch) has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal.
I’m on The WELL right now—for the next week or so—discussing my new book with anyone who wants to participate.
I’m also at Dragon*Con this weekend in Atlanta.
Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it’s selling great, I’d like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers. People in the U.S. can buy a signed copy of the book for $11, Media Mail postage included. (Yes, I’m selling the book at a loss.) People in other countries can buy it for $26, postage included. This is significantly cheaper than Amazon’s discount price.
My only request is that, after you read the book, you post a review about it somewhere. On your blog, on Amazon, on—I suppose—Twitter. Just let people know about it.
Order yours here. This price is only good for the first 100 people who respond, so please act quickly.
EDITED TO ADD (8/15): First 300 people; the response has been so overwhelming.
EDITED TO ADD (8/17): This offer has expired.
I don’t know the context, but these strips sum up my latest book nicely.
Interesting review—by David Roepik—of The Rise of Nuclear Fear, by Spencer Weart:
Along with contributing to the birth of the environmental movement, Weart shows how fear of radiation began to undermine society’s faith in science and modern technology. He writes “Polls showed that the number of Americans who felt ‘a great deal’ of confidence in science declined from more than half in 1966 to about a third in 1973. A main reason for misgivings about science, according to a poll that had studied the matter in detail was ‘Unspoken fear of atomic war.'”
Even more, Weart suggests that nuclear fears have contributed to increasing mistrust not just in modern technology and the people and companies and institutions who control and regulate those technologies, but even in the societal structures that support them. He cites a widely read anti-nuclear book in the late 70s that warned that “the nuclear industry is driving us into a robotic slave society, an empire of death more evil even than Hitler’s.” He notes how strongly these underlying anti-establishment cultural worldviews informed a 1976 article opposing nuclear power by energy expert Amory Lovins, who wrote “reactors necessarily required high centralized power systems, which by their very nature were inflexible, hard to understand, unresponsive to ordinary people, inequitable (my emphasis), and vulnerable to disruption.” Weart observes that “people with a more egalitarian ideology who thought that wealth and power should be widely distributed, were more anxious about environmental risks in general and nuclear power above all than people who believed in a more hierarchical social order.” “By the mid-1970’s,” Weart writes, “many nuclear opponents were saying that their battle was not just against the reactor industry but against all modern hierarchies and their technologies.”
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.