Rating: 
Summary: Disingenuousness
Review: In a nutshell, the problem is that the authors don't even try to present a scientific argument for their thesis, which is that high IQ correlates with acheivement, and conversely, that low IQ correlates with social maladies.Take illegitemacy, for instance. Let's set aside the issue of whether, in this day and age, this can justifiably be considered a social malady. For argument's sake we'll suppose that this is true. But the authors readily acknowledge that IQ doesn't correlate very well with illegitimacy (although both have risen, illegitimacy has risen ~much~ faster than IQ has declined). Still the authors assert that a "complex of factors" combine somehow with low IQ to account for the rise in illegitimacy, even though the purported complex of factors are never explained. In other words, Herrnstein and Murray have no idea why illegitimacy has risen during the period of study, but the spectre of lower IQ as a causal factor just seems irresistable to them. They persistently argue that low IQ causes illegitimacy, shortly after explicitly acknowleging that this can't be proven. To me, this seems like the social research of bigotry, where all prior conclusions are not contested by available data-- only the trappings-- extensive footnotes, an academic tone-- are retained to legitimize what amounts to a crude polemic. And it won't do to argue, as many have here done, that the virtue of the book rests in the fact that it has so many "liberal detrators". The case for the book ought to rest soley on its logical and scholastic merits, not how Jesse Jackson (or whomever) happened to react to it. This amounts to a circular defense of the book's premise, as in the following: (1) A reviewer exposes a logical fallacy central to the book's thesis.
(2) The reviewer, having rejected the holy writ of the central thesis (i.e., IQ equals destiny), must be another member of the "liberal elite", thus disqualifying him/her as an "objective" analyst.
(3) If the central thesis weren't true, then why would the liberal elite be attacking it? The fact of the matter is that IQ manifestly ~does not~ provide an indicator of an individual's future destiny, under any objective measure. If most prison inmates have a low IQ, it does not mean that most (or even a statistically significant number) with a low IQ end up in prison. IQ tends to measure very specific reasoning abilities which don't preclude success in other endeavors-- many of which constitute skills any properly functioning society cannot easily do without. Herrnstein and Murray continually continually acknowledge that the data bears this out, but in a "throwaway" fashion that does nothing to deter them from continuing on in what amounts to an essentially eugenicist polemic. That is the essentially insidious nature of this book, and the authors (at least those still alive) should recant, acknowledge their prejudices, and repudiate the shameful implications of advocating for something even their own data cannot support.
Rating: 
Summary: Paradox of Mongoloid vs Caucasoid IQ
Review: It is often hard to believe Mongoloid with higher IQ over Caucasoid when you look at all the modern science achievement and military domination. Actually this just proves one important point that IQ is not answer for every thing. If you have higher IQ but you never put it into use, your higher IQ will be useless. This exactly explains current situation of Mongoloid population. Psychological data also indicate that Mongoloid population tend to be most conservative by nature. In another words, they are not adventurous. They are the least aggressive population. Such conservative nature prevent them from exploring new ideas and seeking domination over others. Yet, when they are forced into confrontation, their superior IQ did help them win the battle or war such as Japan-Russia war, Korean war, Vietnamese defeat of French, Vietnam war with United States even though Mongoloid nations often had inferior military weaponry during the conflicts. The same can be said for new science discoveries. A simple analogy is genetic athletic capabilities versus top athletes. If you have the strongest muscle and body inherited from your parents, but you hate hard athletic training or work out, you will never be the top athlete. You only have the potential.
A few years ago, groups of Chinese and German scientists tested the IQ and other intellectual capacities of Chinese and German school children in their home countries. The result was really disappointing to German. German scientists had hard time admitting superiority of Chinese Children's IQ.
Rating: 
Summary: A Serious Book That Will Not Hold Up Years From Now
Review: Well written, but TOTALLY flawed. A lot of "scholars" praised this book, but people forget one thing...these "scholars" are human beings. Meaning, they don't have the all the answers to life. The great philosopher, Karl Popper warned that scholars, at best, present tentative indications for their theories, which may eventually be proven false. How can we forget that fully credentialed scientists encouraged the bleeding of patients only a few hundred years ago? Scientists (Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray) may earn our respect, but we should never consider them always right. If you read the "Bell Curve" book (and I suggest everyone to read it), please pick up "The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions". That book is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to dig deeper into this subject matter. Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman did a wonderful job of bringing together authors with widely differing views on the "The Bell Curve." As a black woman, I highly recommend the article by Hugh Pearson entitled "Breaking Ranks." Pearson aptly argues that the anti-intellectualism embraced by many black males afraid of being perceived as "acting white". I think Pearson's article does much to explain the low I.Q. scores of this group. The Bell Curve should only be a book to start discussions about how to improve IQ among people, but it should never be considered as fact. 50 years from now or less, Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's book will be considered a joke and unproductive.
Rating:
Summary: Courageously un-pc doesn't mean true
Review: Courageous and un-pc it is. True it isn't. The outrage this book caused doesn't mean "some folks are desperate to avoid the truth" or "the media is trying to keep the truth from us". When you stand above the angry debate and analyze this book's assertions about race, they quickly fall apart. First there's the concept of race itself. Race is a biological fact, but not a very meaningful one. To give one example, Africa is a very ethnically (or "racially") diverse continent. There are "blacks" that are a lot closer genetically to whites and other non-black groups than to other blacks. In fact, the only thing all blacks seem to have in common is skin color! So, when you say black, what on earth do you mean? It's a very vague word, to say the least. And when you get to down to the even murkier concept of ethnicity (as in "Jewish") you face even more problems. American Jews are basically Europeans! Although they were in theory endogamic, they mixed a whole lot with gentiles. Having only a Jewish mother made you Jewish. Witness the fact that Jews from Eastern Europe look markedly different from Jews from Spain, Egypt and the Middle East (the ones that remained there after the diaspora). All these Jews look much like the populations of the countries they come from! So when you say Jew, what on earth do you mean? How can you make an assertion based on Jewish "ethnicity" if there's no such thing? Not in the strict sense of the word at least. It is impossible to predict how succesful an immigrant group will be in a new country. Some groups arrived in America penniless and starving and became very successful. Others didn't. This is true in many other countries. But the data from other countries tends to affirm the preponderance of the "environment" aspect of intelligence vis-a-vis the hereditary aspect. In Northern Ireland, the Catholic Irish score as much as 15 IQ points less than Protestants. A similar thing happens in Japan with Korean immigrants, in Belgium with the Flemish, and in South Africa with people of Dutch -- as opposed to English -- descent. One notable thing these four peoples have in common is the way they are regarded in the countries where they live. They are seen as lazy, stupid, inferior. They suffer discrimination and all that comes with it: lower incomes and poor social self-esteem. The book rightly points out that intelligence is only partly hereditary. But then it goes on to draw conclusions rooted in race that can only be reductionist in the face of such diverse data. Perhaps it wouldn't be wrong to attempt to use genetics and race to attempt to draw some sort of conclusion or other, but the authors' particular conclusions are incredibly simplistic. The truth is, you can find the right staticstics to prove just about anything you want to prove, ignoring the rest. That's the nature of "science" in our society. It is very naive to think that the authors have "nothing to gain" from promoting a particular ideology. Influencing public opinion is, after all, an incredibly lucrative field. And with the wide array of so-called "think thanks" around us, channeling funds for the publication of just this type of "science"... If you don't realize just how much science around you is bought and paid for, then beware, for you are being duped.
Rating:
Summary: Mongoloids are not more intelligent than Caucasians mostly
Review: The Caucasians are the ones who brought humankind to the moon, German scientist and British scientist remains the most brilliant scientist all over the world, the Caucasians are the ones who conquered most of the world compared to the conquests of non-Caucasians, first-world nations remains to be mostly Caucasian countries and not Mongoloid countries, there are way more Mongoloid immigrants to Caucasian countries, than Caucasians to Mongoloid countries, which says that Caucasian civilization is better than Mongoloid civilization in general. All throughout the modern age Caucasian countries has always been ahead of Mongoloid countries generally, so why deny the reality that Caucasians in general are the most intelligent?
Rating:
Summary: Whether you'll agree or disagree, it's worth your time
Review: American Enterprise Institute academic Michael Ledeen was right to call "The Bell Curve" "the most moderate book in recent years to spark such an accusatorial controversy." While it's true that "The Bell Curve" draws many surprising and concerning conclusions, and some conclusions that some people find alarming, the issues are legitimate and merit consideration. The basic premises and theses of "The Bell Curve" are these: that intelligence, IQ, or (perhaps less inflammatorily) cognitive ability is a real, measurable, quantifiable characteristic of a human being; that different people tend to be assigned very different roles by society depending on their level of cognitive ability; that people of different cognitive abilities behave differently in some important ways; that cognitive ability is substantially heritable; and that different groups tend to have differing levels of cognitive ability. The authors support these theses using the (remarkably rich) body of literature on the subject. Their procedures are documented with great care and a tremendous variety of sources is cited. The book can be read at a number of levels. At its shortest, the book amounts to only some thirty pages in length. Each chapter begins with a summary that briefly outlines the conclusions that will be reached. The main text of the book is about 550 pages. The content consists chiefly of validation and explanation of the authors' claims, as well as some psychometric history, all of which is both fascinating and persuasive. In addition to the primary text, the book is replete with sidenotes, endnotes, and appendices, to say nothing of the hundreds of external sources to which we are referred in the bibliography. The authors' style is simultaneously informative, accessible, frank, cautious, and persuasive. Of especial interest to the skeptical (including me) is the afterword, in which one of the authors responds to recent critical commentary of "The Bell Curve." Whatever your position on psychometrics and whatever critical commentary you may have read on "The Bell Curve," this book is an indispensable tool that will allow you to survey the evidence for yourself. Like many who read the primary source rather than relying on biased commentaries, you may find that the logic, not to mention the statistics, of the authors is inescapable. Regardless of your personal beliefs, the book brings up issues that will be fundamental to the future of the human race. It is at least worth your examination.
Rating:
Summary: The problem isn't racism, the problem is bad science . . .
Review: What the positive reviews of this book fail to realize is that Murray and Herrnstein base their ideas and conclusions on demonstrably bad science, disingenuously presented. The problem isn't that their conclusions are racist; the errors they perpetuate are damaging to people of all ethnicities. Anyone reading The Bell Curve needs also to read Steven Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man. Gould's book was written 10 years before The Bell Curve (because Murray and Herrnstein didn't actually say anything new) and has been updated to include his critique of The Bell Curve. I give this book one star simply because the arguments are clearly and readably presented, even though the authors' plainly intend to dazzle the reader with numbers.
Rating:
Summary: the authors' IQ
Review: The authors computed what the correlation between race or profession and the so called IQ is. Their conclusions are disturbing and contrary to common sense. Here goes the common sense : suppose you give them a grant to research not IQ correlations but ability to play piano correlations. They have to spend some time gathering the stats, but eventually when it comes to interpreting them, all they have to do it edit their book and replace IQ with piano : parents who play piano have children who play piano, whites play more piano than blacks, wealthy people play piano better, etc. Of course the real reason why people play piano is that they had piano lessons and trained for years when they were young, and that may just be that their parents moved into a furnished house with a piano, or they just had room for it, or daddy likes to play piano himself. Same for IQ, some people spend years getting a good education and some don't, ant it just depends if your parents neighbor is a maths teacher or not, or you had a school trip to Goddard Space Center or not. I hope no one in Washington will take their conclusions seriously, because here they come : since the IQ is fixed, educating the children with a high IQ is the way to go (never mind they don't know how and why the IQ can be increased, I suggest motivation is a good way) and affirmative action is questionable (at least the Supreme Court went in the opposite direction), and the litany of irresponsible suggestions that you can predict. Somebody needs to write another book to explain correctly the data, and yet another one to explain the psychology (and IQ, including common sense) of social science professors. I give 3 stars because there are interesting developments throughout the book, like how Harvard became more selective, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Watershed work
Review: When Darwin published his Origin of Species, not all of his ideas were completely new to science. Evolution was already widely discussed, but Darwin's work nailed down the principle so completely, supported it with observation so well, and presented his case so irrefutably, that it created a firestorm in his own time. Evolution was a direct threat to cherished beliefs of millions of people. It undermined their sense of purpose, meaning and dignity and gave nothing in return to fill that emotional hole. The Bell Curve is another such watershed work, bringing together many decades of research, and likewise it undermines (and honestly invalidates) cherished egalitarian dreams. And, like Darwin, they leave little to fill the hole in the heart with. I think it's always better to see the world the way it is rather than retreat into comforting crutches. If you have not read this book, you should.
Rating:
Summary: The Life Curve..
Review: In a nutshell, the book states that your position in life, is based on your intelligence. ex. the brighter you are, the more success you have, the duller you are, having the opposite effect. The book is loaded w/ an abundant amount of statistics and facts to show this. The author goes into meticulous detail on some of lifes issues like occupation, education, socio-economic standards, parenting, welfare, crime, etc.
For me, this book objectifies what I see and think in everyday life. While reading this book, the way things work in life, came together like a piece of a puzzle. Keep in mind that this is a book based on means and averages, not much in life is one sided.
The author points out that the composition of I.Q. is hereditary as well as environmental, and that the proportion is debatable. Though the popular belief among scholars is that it's more hereditary than enviornmental. If you are interested in elightening yourself on todays society, and possibly the future of it, pick up this book, it's a great read!
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