I had an interest in reading this book because of the controversy surrounding it and its interesting subject matter. Anyone who criticizes the book or the topic without reading it is due for a shocker upon reading the text, for all criticisms are squashed via thorough discussion and sound empirical testing. An excellent read for anyone interested in correlations between social factors and indicators of success or failure in life. One prerequisite for consumption of this book would be an ability to read charts and graphs and to draw conclusions from the data.

I had to read this for a class. When we analyzed the data, it just fell apart. It really is an example of researchers drawing a conclusion first and trying to make their data match their assumptions.

I didn’t see the “danger” and “fascism” that are supposed to be inherant in this book. It was a fairly good read, analyzing a study sample (LTLS, if I recall) and then performing all sorts of statistical functions on the numbers and looking at what comes out. As we all know, numbers can say what you want them to, but when w are told obvious things, such as if you are poor, badly educated, and have kids early and out of wedlock, your chances of 1) being in the upper 10% of the population (as regards intelligence) and 2) staying poor are very poor and very good respectively.In sum, if you like reading controversial books, this is for you. If you like social science, this is for you. If you can’t understand graphs, then this book probably isn’t for you.