Volume 41, Number 19 · November 17, 1994
Apocalypse Now?
By Alan Ryan
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
by Richard J. Herrnstein, by Charles Murray
Free Press, 845 pp., $30.00
The Bell Curve is the product of an obsession, or, more exactly, of two different obsessions. Richard Herrnstein—who died on September 24 of this year—was obsessed with the heritability of intelligence, the view that much the largest factor in our intellectual abilities comes in our genes. He was also convinced that there had been a liberal conspiracy to obscure the significance of genetically based differences in the intelligence of different races, social classes, and ethnic groups, and that all manner of educational and economic follies were being perpetrated in consequence. Charles Murray—who is energetically and noisily with us still—is obsessed with what he believes to be the destructive effects of the American welfare state.
Review, 5795 words
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