In an incisive inquiry into the nature of deception, the author of Grammatical Man offers a provocative debate about the nature of truth and ethics, the diverse faces and devices of falsehood, and the postmodern emphasis on meaning at the expense of truth. Perhaps George Washington couldn't do it, but millions of lesser mortals now find it quite easy. Lying, that is. For Campbell, the modern world's astounding appetite for untruth demands an explanation. And it is no simple tale. In probing the history of prevarication, Campbell excavates the very foundations of philosophy and science to uncover the justifications for abandoning veracity. Radical skepticism here emerges as the great legitimator of falsehood, the corrosive enemy of truth. For if the human mind never really grasps truth, why censure the liar, who at least recognizes the illusions in his fictions? This genealogy of doubt gives us perceptive portraits of predictable figures, such as Ockham, Nietzsche, and Freud. But it is Darwin who looms surprisingly large, quietly subverting philosophy and logic with his dark suspicions as to how natural selection has primed the mind with strategies for deceit. But more than a few other modern intellectuals have joined Darwin in making our age sympathetic to deceivers: aesthetes have exempted art from all tests of veracity; ideologues have rationalized any fiction that advanced their cause; radical literary theorists have leeched all stable meaning out of canonical texts. Why tell the truth when deception can serve so many purposes? A book too disturbing to be ignored. Bryce Christensen Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Jeremy Campbell is the Washington correspondent for London's Evening Standard and is the author of Grammatical Man . He lives in Washington, DC.