Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, bold, and of vast implication
Review: The political nerve this book touched is amazing. I wonder how many of these negative reviewers actually READ the book and how many just decided to leave a negative comment because they don't AGREE with what the book says. Is the research here perfect? No, but it's definitely solid. This book, although heavy reading at times, is destined to become a classic! As you read the book and look at the statistics which are increasingly being omitted in other sources (such as the World Almanac) because they are not politically popular with certain groups, a great number of things will begin to make sense. I guess being a few years away from a PhD in genetics, I feel more qualified than the layman to comment on this book. I want the reader to ask him/herself a few questions when they consider the issues here: who give numbers, facts, references, statistics, coorelations, and control experiments, and who gives defensive rationalizations such as "you can't measure IQ" or "you don't know that for sure" or "because some sources they use have been called racist, their whole work is racist by association". The only intelligent argument against this book which (IMHO) needs to be addressed is the "correlation/causation" argument - that is, just because A & B are found to be together, does that mean for certain that A caused B? Read the book - it's not really a book about race... it's about intelligence and social stratifications, and it's good.
Rating: 
Summary: Read this book, but NOT for the reason you might suspect
Review: THE BELL CURVE is a book that I suggest many people read - *not* because it has a solid thesis (about social class being determined by intelligence), or even because of the creative logic it uses to support its assertions. Although I have some serious problems with their logic, their assumptions, and their conclusions, I urge people to read this book on a basis of "know thy enemy." If you look at the Bibliography of this book, you will find the word "Eugenics" thrown around quite a bit, which is a scary thought - deliberately picking through the "best" of our kind and separating that from the chaff. This is a book to be read and questioned, and it provides some deeper, more disturbing thoughts about scientific racism, the deliberate misuse of science to propagate some extremely reprehensible ideas, and the distortion of data to justify one's conclusions, rather than examining the data to see what occurs. Hernstein & Murray naturally assume that intelligence is something that is "inherited", like hair color, rather than as something that is shaped by a variety of influences. Murray, in the prologue of the paperback edition, urges readers to "look at the text" and find proof of all the allegations. I urge you to look at the text for what it is - the deliberate misrepresentation of data.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Example Of Modern Propaganda
Review: The best criminals each have a high IQ. The best track runners each have a high IQ. Usually the best, but only those who remain the best, have a high IQ. The writers of "The Bell Curve" were looking for "facts" to back up their long standing beliefs- and they found a few which were used to write the book. But, a culture of success is not possible in a culture which is depressed and spiritually broken, no matter what the average IQ. The Bell Curve is propaganda written only for people who are not smart enough (although highly educated) to find "The answer" to each difficult question.
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece
Review: This book is fundamentally not about race. I sometimes wonder if the hype surrounding it is just brilliant marketing. After all, how many people would actually buy (and read) a book about social issues and intelligence. The ideas contained in this book will challenge, intrigue, and provoke you, but most importantly, it will make you think in a different way about the issues contained in it. I believe it is destined to become one of the most important works of our century. An absolute must read for all thinking people!
Rating:
Summary: A theory to address many social problems
Review: Essentially, this book rests on the proposition that human intelligence is largely inherited. (60% to 80% according to the authors.) Starting there, the authors show how society has evolved from a hunter/gatherer to an agricultural to an industrial to an information based culture. At each stage, except the last, intelligent people were evenly distributed throughout society at every level and every occupation. In this century, however, the educational system has selected out the most intelligent 10% and marked them for further training. The consequences are intriguing, to say the least. This is a profoundly unsettling book that should be read cover to cover. Forget everything you've heard about it and see for yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: The Other Side of the Bell Curve
Review: In this day in age, it is amazing to witness the continued praise for the Bell Curve. This continues despite a mountain of empirical research which demonsrates unequivocally that the environment, socio-economic status, and social tier into which one is born deeply affects individual success. Most scholars hold that intelligence, however measured - and, indeed, many measures of intelligence have been created, is but a single variable in the complex make-up of human behavior. The explanations offered by the authors of The Bell Curve do not acknowledge entire fields of study which have long ago established the critical role of society in the development of human behavior. It is important to seek out explanations that do not rely on single and simplistic variables to establish causal relationships. This is especially true when discussing the complexities of social structure.
Rating:
Summary: Somebody had the courage to turn on the light switch
Review: Forget about what you've heard about this book and read it, cover to cover, because almost nothing more important has been written on the development of a class system in America. That this class system is based on cognitive ability is an occurrence without historical parallel
Rating: 
Summary: A must read if you want to have intelligent debates
Review: Regardless of how you feel on the subject on genetics and I.Q., you must read the book if you want to be able to argue intelligently. This book has been mis-represented by both those arguing against it and those arguing for it. Only those people who actually read it will be able to participate in progressive debates.
The book is long and difficult to read. Unless you have a true love, and understanding, of psychometrics there are several sections you will want to skim through (quickly).
However, if we, as a country, are to ever make progress on issues of race, education, and affirmative action we should all have an understanding of the issues we are arguing. Otherwise we will fall into the traps of speculation and uninformed opinions.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting book -- it's about intelligence, not race.
Review: While the popular press has spent a lot of energy talking
about what this book has to say about correlations between race and intelligence, the book deals with that only peripherally. It is fundamentally about intelligence and how
it correlates with a host of problems in our society. The
authors conclude (based on reams of cited references) that
a) stupid people do stupid things and b) while it appears
that intelligence is predominantly genetic, it is no easier
to change the environmental portion than the genetic portion.
The last chapter has an interesting (good) defense of our social
welfare state.
Rating:
Summary: Thought Police Strike Again
Review: I find it very distressing that this seminal work is out of print. This means that it is not required reading in college humanities curricula, even though it broke new ground in dealing with the relationship of "cognitive ability" to poverty, crime, illegitimacy, career success, etc. Nor will the larger public find it at their local "Tattered Cover" book store.The suppression of this work by the "cognitive elite" suggests it must have hit a tender spot in their protective intellectual armor. At the same time, this is not to say the book would not have benefitted from tighter editing. There seems to be more than one book contained in this work, perhaps two or three. It would have been better had the authors produced a more narrow argument focusing on what is known of the variations in cognitive ability and stopped there. Other work could have followed on the social and political consequences (allowing, of course, for the unfortunate fact that one of the co-authors died near completion of the tome). The authors did not address the effects of Vernacular Black English (VBE) being the mother tongue of many blacks, a fact which must be overcome to a considerable extent if intelligence test results from this sub-group are to have validity when compared with test takers whose mother tongue is American English. (They do concede that problems exist in comparing results with Latino and American Indian test takers.) How much of a problem this may be, I do not know, but a problem it is nevertheless. On the overall argument, that low intelligence correlates to a surprising degree with high rates of crime, illegitimacy and poverty, the authors cannot be faulted. The disturbing demographic picture the authors describe, of the ongoing "dysgenisis" of the American polity, correlates very well with arguments in Samuel Huntington's new book, "Who are We?" Read together, and given the obstinacy of the prevailing wisdom among the "cognitive elite," these two books could very well provide an explanation as to why the United States of America fragmented in the latter decades of the 21st century as the Soviet Union did in the latter part of the 20th century.
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