Kwame Anthony Appiah

The Lies that Bind - Rethinking Identity

2018 302.5 APP Beaverton Library

Appiah writes the weekly Ethicist column for the New York Times Magazine.

6 copies of this book in the WCCLS system, I was the first to check a copy out in 5 months, and one copy has stayed on the shelf since 2019. It is a bit academic, bordering on turgid.

The book describes group identity - or more precisely, the vagueness of those concepts:

• 1 Classification
• 2 Creed
• 3 Country
• 4 Color
• 5 Class
• 6 Culture

Lots of history, almost all of it "AD". No index mentions of mathematics, science, engineering, invention. One phrase mentions of Darwin, Edison, Einstein, Ford, Newton.

Gregor Mendel and Mendelian genetics are an important exception to that, p118-p112 . Those pages debunk "race" as little more than superficial, accidental appearance.

The book is worthwhile as an antidote to self-aggrandizing idiots who attribute their fortunes (or failures) to their genes, or their adversaries genes. "The Lies" define the walls we imprison ourselves behind.