This is the same funny circular argument the author of these "rules" made. If you don't believe in the value of the reporting Woodward and Bernstein did, why would you believe there's value in their account of how they did it?
Re:Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
by cfmcdonald on Friday February 08, 2019 @03:49PM
(#19118530)
I think you're kind of cherry-picking examples here. My gloss of the OP's point was "be skeptical of books by journalists on technically complex subjects in which they have no direct expertise". e.g. it's common for journalists who have never worked in a scientific field to write popular science books.
A book about investigative journalism by investigative journalists is rather different.
How is blood lab technology not a technically complex subject? Are you saying Carreyrou had direct expertise with it, or that _Bad Blood_ is an untrustworthy account?
Re:Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
by davidivadavid on Friday February 08, 2019 @04:08PM
(#19118687)
Does Bad Blood cover the tech aspects of Theranos? My impression was that it was more about the psychological and legal stuff.
Edit: ... which obviously doesn't make the book any less interesting.
It does indeed. The question you are asking leads me to believe you haven't read it. As a favor to the thread I will make this plain: drop everything else you're reading long-form and buy a copy of _Bad Blood_; it is fantastic. I didn't give a shit about Theranos. Until I got a couple pages into Carreyrou's book, that is.
Re:Rules for Choosing Nonfiction Books
by davidivadavid on Friday February 08, 2019 @06:14PM
(#19119557)
Haven't read it. It's been sitting on a pile somewhere. Time to reprioritize!
Whether the particular books you refer to are false negatives on these heuristics is of course a matter of opinion. I don't know Woodward and Bernstein's book on constitutional law; their most famous book, All the President's Men, would surely fall under a similar exception to biography/memoir, since it is an account of their own investigation.