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"From the New York Times-bestselling author and host of NPR's Hidden Brain comes a counter- intertuitive, thought-provoking exploration of deception's role in human success. Everyone agrees that lies and self-deception can do terrible harm to our lives, to our communities, and to the planet. But in Useful Delusions, host of NPR's Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam argues that, paradoxically, deceiving ourselves and others can also play a vital role in...
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Whether it's in a cockpit at takeoff or the planning of an offensive war, a romantic relationship or a dispute at the office, there are many opportunities to lie and self-deceive -- but deceit and self-deception carry the costs of being alienated from reality and can lead to disaster. So why does deception play such a prominent role in our everyday lives? In short, why do we deceive?
In his bold new work, prominent biological theorist Robert Trivers...
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Recounts the story of the six double agents--Bronx, Brutus, Treasure, Tricycle, Garbo, and a shadowy sixth spy whose heroic sacrifice is revealed here for the first time--who would weave a web of deception so intricate that it ensnared Hitler's army and helped to carry thousands of troops across the Channel in safety on 6 June 1944, D-Day.
The story of D-Day has been told from many points of view, but never before from the perspectives of the key...
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To one degree or another, we all misjudge reality. Our perception--of ourselves and the world around us--is much more malleable than we realize. This self-deception influences every major aspect of our personal and social life, including relationships, sex, politics, careers, and health.
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The author, a behavioral economist, challenges our preconceptions about dishonesty and urge us to take an honest look at ourselves. We all cheat, whether it is copying a paper in the classroom, or white lies on our expense accounts. Does the chance of getting caught affect how likely we are to cheat? How do companies pave the way for dishonesty? Does collaboration make us more honest or less so? Does religion improve our honesty? Here the author explores...
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"Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant...
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Abby Ellin was shocked to learn that her fiancé was leading a secret life. But as she soon discovered, the world is full of people who aren't what they seem. From Abby Ellin's first date with the Commander, she was caught up in a whirlwind. Within six months he'd proposed, and they'd moved in together. But soon, his exotic stories of international espionage began to unravel. Finally, it all became clear: he was lying about who he was. After leaving...
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"From phishing scams to pyramid schemes, our world is filled with people who want to fool us. In Nobody's Fool, expert psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris break down the science behind deception to pull back the curtain on how we can all avoid being scammed-or even scam the scammers in return. Simons and Chabris identify ten specific features of our psychology that make us vulnerable to being tricked, from our innate tendency to treat...
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"It's a commonplace to say that we each tell stories about ourselves, trying to shape how others perceive us, and how we perceive ourselves. And the commonplace is true, as far as it goes-which isn't very far at all. As neuroscientist Gregory Berns shows in The Self Delusion, you, I, we don't just tell stories about ourselves. We are the stories-there's no stable personality to tell stories about. What's more, the stories are, for the most part, false....
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Do you feel stuck in your life? Do you wonder why? Does something seem wrong, but you can't put your finger on it? In The Lies We Tell Ourselves, psychotherapist Jon Frederickson reveals the ways we fool ourselves and how to get unstuck. Through dozens of stories and examples, he shows how the apparent cause of our problems is almost never the real cause. In addition, he reveals what we really fear and how to face it. In these pages you'll discover•...
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"In his third book about deception during war, Paul B. Janeczko focuses his lens on World War II and the operations carried out by the Twenty-Third Headquarters Special Troops, aka the Ghost Army. This remarkable unit included actors, camouflage experts, sound engineers, painters, and set designers who used their skills to secretly and systematically replace fighting units -- fooling the Nazi army into believing what their eyes and ears told them,...
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"A writer's humorous and often-heartbreaking tale of losing his sight-and how he hid it from the world. At age sixteen, James Tate Hill was diagnosed with Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy, a condition that left him legally blind. After high school friends stopped calling and a disability counselor advised him to aim for Cs in his classes, Hill used his remaining blurry peripheral vision to pretend he could still see. Feigning eye contact, memorizing...
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"Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended...
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In a powerful memoir, identity theft expert Betz-Hamilton tells the shocking and unsettling story of her family, betrayal, and deceit. Convinced that the thief had to be someone they knew, Axton and her parents completely cut off the outside world, isolating themselves from friends and family.