John Stossel TOPICS: Media / Broadcast / Print Journalism Celebrity FEE CATEGORY:* Contact for fee schedule TRAVELS FROM: New York Profile Program Outlines Books & Videos Request This Speaker

John Stossel: Books & Videos

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know Is Wrong


John Stossel—award-winning journalist, tireless consumer-rights crusader, and anchor of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20—has built his reputation on his willingness to debunk conventional wisdom, no matter the source. In his latest New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 200,000 copies in hardcover, he busts the myths, lies, and downright stupidity clogging media outlets on all sides of the spectrum. Taking a shovel to the heaps of misinterpretations and outright mistakes passing for "fact" these days, Stossel proves:

—That contrary to popular belief, Americans have more free time now than ever before;
—How DDT could actually save millions of lives annually, if only we hadn't been wrongly convinced it caused cancer;
—That Republicans don't shrink government—they expand it;
—Why bottled water is a rip-off (hint: not only doesn't it taste better than tap, it's no healthier either!);
—How "defective product" lawsuits end up depriving us of safer products;
—Why it's okay to marry your cousin;
—And much, much more.


Bursting with facts, sharp insights, and plain old common sense, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity is a modern muckraking classic.

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Give Me a Break


Ballooning government? Millionaire welfare queens? Tort lawyers run amok? A $330,000 outhouse, paid for with your tax dollars? John Stossel says, "Give me a break."

When he hit the airwaves thirty years ago, Stossel chased snake-oil peddlers, rip-off artists, and corporate thieves, winning the applause of his peers.

But along the way, he noticed that there was something far more troublesome going on: While the networks screamed about the dangers of coffee pots, worse risks were ignored.

In Give Me a Break, Stossel explains how ambitious bureaucrats, intellectually lazy reporters, and greedy lawyers make your life worse even as they claim to protect your interests. Taking on such sacred cows as the FDA, the War on Drugs, and scare-mongering environmental activists -- and backing up his trademark irreverence with careful reasoning and research -- he shows how the problems that government tries and fails to fix can be solved better by the extraordinary power of the free market.

He traces his journey from cub reporter to 20/20 co-anchor, revealing his battles to get his ideas to the public, his struggle to overcome stuttering, and his eventual realization that, for years, much of his reporting missed the point.

Stossel concludes the book with a modest proposal for change. It's a simple plan in the spirit of the Founding Fathers to ensure that America remains a place "where free minds -- and free markets -- make good things happen."

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