How long does it take to read Private Truths, Public Lies?
Timur Kuran
Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran takes about 8 hours 8 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 8 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1995. 444 pages, about 122,100 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 34 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 8 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Preference falsification, according to the economist Timur Kuran, is the act of misrepresenting one's wants under perceived social pressures. It happens frequently in everyday life, as when we tell the host of a dinner party that we are enjoying the food when we actually find it bland. In Private Truths, Public Lies Kuran argues convincingly that the phenomenon not only is ubiquitous but has huge social and political consequences. Drawing on diverse intellectual traditions, including ones rooted in economics, psychology, sociology, and political science, Kuran provides a unified theory of how preference falsification shapes collective decisions, orients structural change, sustains social stability, distorts human knowledge, and conceals political possibilities. Private Truths, Public Lies uses its theoretical argument to illuminate an array of puzzling social phenomena. They include the unexpected fall of communism, the paucity, until recently, of open opposition to affirmative action in the United States, and the durability of the beliefs that have sustained India's caste system.
Subjects: Knowledge, Theory of, Public opinion, Social influence, Theory of Knowledge, Truthfulness and falsehood, Social aspects
