Don't Blame Your Parents
interview with Judith Rich Harris: Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Nurture Assumption
"The evidence I've put together in my book indicates that parents have little or no long-term effect on their children's personality, intelligence, or mental health."

The Female Hard-on
Tristan Taormino: Village Voice columnist; editor of radical lesbian magazine On Our Backs; editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series; author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women
"The truth is that 40 percent of American women experience some form of sexual dysfunction. It's actually a bigger problem than it is for men (30 percent suffer from some form of dysfunction), and yet all the money and research has focused on the boys."

Art and the Eroticism of Puberty
David Steinberg: columnist and freelance writer of sexual culture/politics; editor of Erotic by Nature and The Erotic Impulse
"In general, the designated pervert of any given era will be whoever most threatens to overturn the prevailing myth of asexual innocence."

"A World That Hates Gays": Is There Really a Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic?
Philip Jenkins: Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies; author of fourteen books, including Using Murder and Moral Panic
"Through the 1990s, it was common to claim that gay victims represented perhaps a third of the teen suicide 'epidemic,' and this figure became simply a social fact, something that 'everybody knows' . . . In fact, estimates for the level of gay teen suicide are quite misleading and wildly inflated."

Apt Pupils
Robert Sterling: editor and publisher of the Konformist Website; freelance writer
"The true purpose behind the Western schooling system was to transform the young into killers . . . Could such a phenomenon such as social persecution develop independently across nearly every high school in the country without it being a byproduct of some design?"

A Panic of Biblical Proportions over Media Violence
Paul McMasters: First Amendment Ombudsman at the Freedom Forum; executive director of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center
"It would be impossible to produce a list of 1,000 studies that state an unequivocally causal link between media and 'aggressive behavior' in children, let alone violent acts by children. Yet this 'fact' has been tossed about so often by politicians and activists that even professionals and scholars feel safe in using it."

The Man in the Bushes: Mythkiller Philip Jenkins Deconstructs Serial Killers, Child Molesters, and Other Scary People
interview with Philip Jenkins
"The best breakdown of known American serial-killer cases is by Eric Hickey, who finds substantial numbers of women and minorities as serial killers." "The idea of child abuse is so deeply ingrained in our society that it seems absolutely obvious that all sensible people, everywhere, will think likewise unless they are deeply sick. To the contrary, even this absolute orthodoxy is in fact very new in historic terms."

CONDEMNED TO REPEAT IT

Amnesia in America: Or, The Sociology of Forgetting
James Loewen: University of Vermont professor; author of several books, including Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America
"The ideology of progress lets historians sequester repugnant people and events, from racists to robber barons, in the distant past, so we don't have to worry about them now."

Columbus and Western Civilization
Howard Zinn: Boston University professor emeritus; author of several books, including the classic A People's History of the United States
"In Columbus' journal, an entry of September 1498 reads: 'From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold . . .'" "The argument about children 'not being ready to hear the truth' does not account for the fact that in American society, when the children grow up, they still are not told the truth."

Go Out and Kill People Because This Article Told You To: The Political History of the First Amendment
Nick Mamatas: freelance writer/columnist; editor of Soft Skull Press; coauthor of Kwangju Diary
"It seems that nearly everyone, from pornographers and bomb-throwers, to holy rollers and goose-steppers, are just sure that the secret cabal of wealthy landowners who founded this country would be so eager to read their tracts and pamphlets."

Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of "The Good War"
Michael Zezima: freelance writer; author of Saving Private Power
"American lives weren't sacrificed in a holy war to avenge Pearl Harbor nor to end the Nazi Holocaust, just as the Civil War wasn't fought to end slavery. WWII was about territory, power, control, money, and imperialism. Sure, the Allies won and ultimately, that's a very good thing—but it doesn't mean they did it fair and square."

What I Didn't Know About the Communist Conspiracy
Jim Martin: editor and publisher of Flatland magazine; proprietor of Flatland Books; author of Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War
"These messages revealed an extensive Soviet espionage apparatus operating in Washington, New York, and San Francisco throughout the war years. The FBI, working in cooperation with cryptoanalysts at the National Security Agency, had identified many US government officials at a wide range of federal agencies."

TRIPPING

Drug War Mythology
Paul Armentano: Senior Policy Analyst for the NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) Foundation in Washington, DC
"In 1998, police arrested 682,885 Americans for marijuana offenses, more than the total number of arrestees for all violent crimes combined, including murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault."

Toad Licking Blues
Thomas Lyttle: freelance writer; publisher and editor of Psychedelic Monographs and Essays; editor of several books
"It is important to note that bufotenine—a minor constituent of all Bufo toad venoms—is not hallucinogenic."

Poppycock: Truth and Lies about Poppies, Opium, and Painkilling Drugs
Jim Hogshire: freelance writer; author of several books, including Sell Yourself to Science and Opium for the Masses
"Prosecutions for crimes involving opium or opium poppies are rare. But that has less to do with the frequency of poppy crimes and everything to do with suppressing information about the opium poppy."

AA Lies
Charles Bufe: freelance writer; publisher of See Sharp Press; author of numerous books, including Alcoholics Anonymous: Cult or Cure?
"There are probably more myths and misconceptions about Alcoholics Anonymous, America's most sacrosanct institution, than there are about any other mass organization in our country . . . AA is not only far from the only way to deal with an alcohol problem, but the best available scientific evidence indicates that it is ineffective."