Legends, Lore, and Lies: A Skeptic's Stance, a Longman Topics Reader Paperback - 2006 - 1st Edition

From the rear cover

LONGMAN TOPICS are brief, thought-provoking readers on a single complex, compelling, topic. Featuring about 30 full-length reading selections, these volumes are generally half the size and half the cost of standard composition readers.

Legends, Lore, and Lies: A Skeptic's Stance presents intriguing readings in five sections-urban legends, alternative medicine, the media's role in public gullibility, psychics and the paranormal, and pseudo science-to demonstrate the importance of critical examination and the differences between an opinion or assertion and a supported claim.

Legends, Lore, and Lies offers a wealth of features, including

• Explorations of the powers and limits of skepticism in understanding topics like urban legends and pseudoscience that often are awarded uncritical acceptance in our culture.
• An excellent explanation of skepticism, along with a number of tools that every reader can use to become a critical consumer of information.
• A handful of "believers" point-of-view readings, which students are encouraged to examine with the tools they acquire throughout the text.
• A variety of pedagogical tools including brief author biographies and questions preceding and following the readings that function as writing and discussion prompts.
• End-of-chapter synthesis questions that provide writing suggestions for longer research and inquiry papers.