Deception: From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating

by Brooke Harrington, Murray Gell-Mann (Foreword)

From Internet-dating profiles to Native American folktales to the photo trickery of Hollywood gossip magazines, this volume explores deception and offers insights from leading figures in disparate fields, drawing out surprising commonalities. For the first time, one broadly accessible volume pulls together classic philosophical debates on deception with examinations of contemporary issues, including stock market fraud and terrorism. Deception offers a unique perspective on the state of the readers will find scholars from biology and physics in conversation with experts in mass media and culture, and archaeologists engaged with ideas from military strategists. As the essays make clear, deception touches virtually every aspect of our lives; in fact, recent psychological research suggests that we each tell at least two to three lies per day. Throughout the animal kingdom, survival and reproduction depend upon successful deceptions. But while deception has captured the interest of philosophers, scientists, warriors, and artists over thousands of years, our knowledge of the subject is limited. At the same time, new technologies have made deception more commonplace, more dangerous, and more difficult to detect than ever. Deception is a particularly timely and insightful work. Its scope and subject make it compelling reading for a broad readership.

360 pages, Hardcover

First published April 27, 2009

About the author

Brooke Harrington is Associate Professor of Sociology at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.

Reviews

[Laurel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt a bit mislead by reviews of this compilation of academic essays on deception. I thought it would be much more interesting based on what I had read about this book. I found most of the chapters boring as they covered obvious territory or delved into the philosophy of deception, a topic that does not interest me. Several of the articles were enlightening, in particular, "Deception and Health Crises" and "Military Deception in the Information Age". Both of these chapters were particularly relevant given current events.

[Stephen Sorensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an edited volume split into four parts. They are:
1 - Defining and Detecting Deception
2 - Deception and Technology
3 - Trust and Deception
4 - Deception and Institutions

I thought the essays did well to illuminate each section, but I was disappointed and felt mislead by the subtitle "From Ancient Empires to Internet Dating". The book is almost wholly dedicated to modern philosophies and commentaries of deceptions from the 20th and 21st century. Not that this is a bad thing, but after reading, the title felt, for lack of a better term, deceptive.

Commentary on the ancient world was sparse, and can hardly be considered information about the place of deception in ancient empires. Aside from one mention of a deception involving Zeus, one involving Odysseus, a single sentence about Ovid, and a shallow commentary about Sun Tzu's famous "all warfare is deception" quote, only a couple pages in the final chapter are about ancient deceptions, and these are in relation to Plato.

Regardless of the misleading subtitle, this book is a decent read for anyone who wants to become more familiar with the forms deception has taken in recent human societies. The chapter about anthrax and SARS was a bit uncanny to read in light of our current misfortunes with C-19 and monkey-pox.