Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We Hate: The Writers of Slate's "Assessment" Column Tell It Like It Is

by David Plotz (Editor)

Did Lewis and Clark really matter? What does it take to become a dictator's son, or a MacArthur Genius Grant awardee? Why is baseball always dying? Answers abound in Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We fifty razor-sharp, contrarian looks at today's cultural landscape. Drawing on seven years of Slate's Assessment column, editor David Plotz has compiled a pop-culture reference guide to everyone from L. Ron Hubbard to Scooby-Doo, everything from Bill O'Reilly's secret snobbery to the sudden newsworthiness of a little gland called the prostate. Both Mother Nature and Lobbyists are "Backstabbers." "Crazed Geniuses"? Antonin Scalia and the Cirque du Soleil, to name a few. And when it comes to the common ground between Frank Sinatra and Jesus Christ, they're "Dead, but Won't Go Away." Hilarious and brilliant, Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses and Animals We Hate offers an incisive take on the society you thought you knew. (Did you know, for instance, that Kim Jong-Il has long been rumored to have a fondness for blondes?)

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2006

About the author

Plotz, an American journalist, has been a writer with Slate since its inception and was designated as the online magazine's editor in June 2008.

He is the author of "The Genius Factory: The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank" (2005) and "Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned when I Read Every Single Word of the Bible" (2009).

Reviews

[Dara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really did not enjoy this collection of essays from Slate's Assessment Column. Some of the essay topics were really creative and intriguing but the writing was so pretentious I couldn't enjoy it.

[Michael Dworaczyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this; not enough to want to read it again, but it was a fun little read. Perfect for picking up whenever a couple of minutes were available, as each little mini-bio-essay was never more than 3-4 pages long. And I especially like books like these that jump all over the place as to subject matter (as my mind is wont to do.) I believe it started with Mother Nature and finished with Bill O'Reilley (The Beginning and The End?) and tried to cover everything else in between.

[Smellsofbikes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grumpy biographies of people, some funny, some pretentious, all self-conscious.