Late last autumn this book received a prodigious amount of attention in the United States. No one who has been exposed to any of the American media can have escaped it. Among the reactions was a chorus of élite liberal denunciations. The New Republic of 31 October ran a piece by Murray followed by 18 criticisms. Stephen Jay Gould spoke out in the New Yorker of 28 November. I especially recommend Alan Ryan's analysis in the New York Review of Books of 17 November, followed in the 1 December issue by Charles Lane's examination of some of the sources of statistical information in this book, sources closely connected with an Edinburgh publication, the Mankind Quarterly. Lane is particularly useful on Richard Lynn, a professor at the University of Ulster, who is cited 24 times in the book, but whose research will strike many readers as questionable.

LRB 26 January 1995 | PDF Download