Response to Angus Deaton

I’ve received a fair number of questions about why I have not responded to the review of It’s Better Than It Looks in the New York Times Sunday Book Review. (“Getting Better All the Time?” by Angus Deaton, March 3 2018.)

The basic reason I’ve held my tongue is that complaining about reviews – even if they are unfair or factually inaccurate, both of which happened in this instance – is bad form. There’s considerable luck-of-the-draw with reviews. Every author has both good luck and bad luck in this regard; I’ve certainly had both good luck and bad luck. If an author objects when his luck is bad, doesn’t he have to refuse the compliment when his luck is good?

But given the importance of the New York Times Book Review to the world of books, the fact that the review was by a Nobel Prize winner, and that the NYTBR placed the review on the cover – and that people are asking me why I did not respond – this situation seems to call for at least some comment. I’m responding here, rather than in a letter to the NYTBR, because that seems least confrontational.

The main bookstore competitor to It’s Better Than It Looks is Enlightenment Now by Steve Pinker, which is a terrific book. The NYTBR reviewed Steve’s book side-by-side with mine. Enlightenment Now was praised as prescient and accurate, while my book was derided as naïve and inaccurate. Since both books say roughly the same thing, how can statements be true and admirable when Steve Pinker makes them yet false and troubling when I make them?

Maybe this is luck-of-the-draw – the Times assigned Steve’s book to a reviewer who was sure to like it, and assigned mine to a reviewer who was sure to dislike it.

The Times did not tell readers that Deaton and Pinker are both on the board of directors of an organization that has extensively promoted Pinker’s book. Did that give Deaton an incentive to disparage my book – that is, disparage Pinker’s competitor? At the least, this conflict should have been disclosed to Times readers.

To Deaton’s specific points, he complains that not every statement in It’s Better Than It Looks has a source note. That’s true. Not every statement in Enlightenment Now has a source note either, and this did not bother the Times in the slightest.

The main text of It’s Better Than It Looks is 297 pages, and I’d say there’s an average of five factual assertions per page. That would require about 1,500 source notes. Instead there are about 400 source notes in a 27-page small-type notes section, sourcing all major or disputed assertions in the book. Some critics have praised – here’s good luck -- the depth of the book’s detail. “Overflows with facts, statistics and summaries of academic research.” It’s Better Than It Looks is a general-interest volume, not a Princeton doctoral dissertation. For a general-interest volume, It’s Better Than It Looks is well-sourced.

Deaton’s claim that I am “an unreliable witness” because not every sentence in the book is sourced seems high-and-mighty, given there are many claims in his own 2013 general-interest book The Great Escape that are not sourced. And none of the claims in his review of my book are sourced! That Deaton is so mean-spirited on this point suggests that he did not come into the review with an open mind, rather, he came in looking for something to grouch about.

On his specifics:

The NYTBR review mocks what Deaton asserts is a terrible error of mathematics. Please see page 85 – the formula Deaton misquotes is plain-as-day labeled “conceptual.” Conceptual models are intended to convey basic ideas, rather than to be mathematically exact. By leaving out the key word “conceptual,” the review alters the context.

Deaton calls it a “monument to airbrushing” that It’s Better Than It Looks neglects the “tens of millions of who died because of Hitler, Stalin and Mao.” This is not neglected. Deaths from war are detailed in chapter five; Hitler, Stalin and Mao are named as causes of horror on page 182.

Deaton denounces me for contending there have been “steady” improvements in living conditions since the 18th century, though many things went badly wrong during the period. He skips that It’s Better Than It Looks says, repeatedly, that improvement is an overall trend with significant disturbing exceptions. For instance: “By ‘life gets better’ I surely do not mean all aspects of life are better nor that life is better for every individual.”

Anyone can make a statement appear uninformed by altering the context, or deride a book by distorting its content. Such rhetorical tricks call into question the reviewer’s fair-mindedness. The Times should be better than this.