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Diplomacy.
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July 31, 2013
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July 31, 2013
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Yan
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rated it 4 stars
Jan 07, 2017 02:42PM
Completely senseless review... Sorry.
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If you don't have the knowledge, how are you able to identify biases and errors?
Antimo Farid wrote: "If you don't have the knowledge, how are you able to identify biases and errors?"Sorry that was unclear. I have enough basic knowledge about history to know that there are a lot of errors being made. I do not have knowledge about other things, particularly specialized areas covered by the book, but since there are so many errors in even the basics I have to assume there are a bunch of errors in the parts I'm not familiar with. If I had more specialized knowledge I could filter the book "this is junk, this is junk, this is okay, this is possible, this is junk" and handle the book that way and get something out of it.
Hope that helps.
Mark - first of all thank you for answering. I hope you'll understand that, as a student of history, it's troubling to learn that such a book is ridden with errors. I guess I have two questions then.
Firstly, I would ask you to mention at least one instance of "error", just so I can understand what you're talking about? I have to confess my skepticism: it's difficult to accept that a book published in 1994 (thus easily fact-checked even by amateur historians with access to a public library), by an indisputably knowledgeable author (one that, in many cases, had access to first or second-hand accounts of the facts, not to mention when he was actually in the room or part of the decision making process), contains historical errors as such.
Secondly, I am curious about your definition of "bias": my opinion is that bias is not only inevitable but positive, even necessary. Everyone is biased inasmuch they have an opinion about something. If you accept this, it gives you a much better way to filter what you read. Kissinger's support of Realpolitik might skew such an analysis, but still. Even in this case, I would be curious to read about one instance of bias that you judged most glaring.
It was six years ago, I don't remember.
