My grandmother's birthday is coming up soon.

[conuly]

Well, in November, but that's pretty soon. I want to get her a book, but it has to be easy for her to read, her sight isn't all that good anymore. She was really thrilled with A People's History of the United States, both because it's a different perspective from what's typical and because, growing up in Belgium, she never learned American history in school to begin with. (She's actually a registered Republican, but only so she can screw with their primaries. Otherwise she wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole.)

Amazon thinks Cartoon History of the United States is just the thing, but I'm doubtful that it'll fit the readability criteria. Maybe I should get her another stitcher's magnifying glass to go with it. The old one broke.

But that's not the point. Half the comments there are negative comments saying the book has SUCH a liberal slant to it. I haven't read the book, so I don't know. I do know, though, that when three comments go "They portray such-and-fuch in this way, and conservatives think it's the opposite, he should've tried for some objectivity" that it's time to make a note to tell the nieces all about the fallacy of the middle way.

Just because something is in the middle of two opposing sides, it does NOT mean that's the right solution. If I say Hitler was a very very bad man, and YOU say he's just misunderstood, the truth is still not going to be "he was average". If I say there are no deities, and you say there are hundreds of them, we shouldn't immediately start debating which Abrahamic religion to convert to because one is sorta in the middle of "none" and "lots".

Fallacies. I should make a list, just so I can be sure I cover each and every last one of them so the nieces never fall into those traps. EVER.

Comments

[redbird]

I like the Cartoon History of the United States (and the author's Cartoon History of the Universe and Cartoon History of the Modern World) but yes, add a magnifying glass if your grandmother's sight isn't good. They aren't tiny print, but neither are they especially large, and Gonick does use the whole page.

Also, you're absolutely right about the middle of the road not necessarily being where truth can be found (yellow lines and dead armadillos, yes). Gonick's viewpoint probably is on the liberal side, but I suspect the people complaining are coming from a definition of "liberal" that includes any history that talks about women, nonwhites, and working people, rather than just "great men" and wars. Whatever that says about conservative commenters on Amazon, from the viewpoint of buying your grandmother a book, if she liked A People's History of the United States this should be up her alley.

[bessemerprocess]

If you are really interested in fallacies, might I suggest History's Fallacies by David Hackett Fisher. He goes through an pulls examples of fallacies in popular (of the time... I think it was published in the 80s, but it still a staple of grad level history classes) authors' works, broken down by type of fallacy.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

A possible thought for your grandmother - see if the Kindle's "make the font larger" options are usable for her. That could open up a lot of books that don't come in large print.

Related fallacy - the often-quoted statistic that the average family has 2.4 children. The nieces might enjoy looking for that extra 0.4 of a child :)

[conuly]

That extra kid - or "Fourie", as we call her - is in the basement freezer. She was just .4 too much for us.