"Lies are often so subtle, so deftly woven into easily acceptable truths that we often fail to recognize them. Fireflies find mates by duping rivals with patterns of deceptive flashes; politicians win elections by distorting statistics and spouting half-truths; artists often prize imagination and beauty over simple realism. We accept these events as conventional occurrences and rarely question how they came to pass nor do we debate their merit.

In The Liar's Tale, Jeremy Campbell rigorously explores the provocative notion that deception is not only an ineradicable aspect of human nature but a necessary and useful part of human success and enlightenment.".

"Campbell shows that, throughout history, the devices of falsehood - whether simple exaggeration, pretense, or barefaced lies - have always been hard to resist and easy to employ.

In tracing the natural history of falsehood, The Liar's Tale turns Sisella Bok's defense of truth, as demonstrated in her book Lying, on its head as Campbell compellingly argues that deception can no longer be seen as an artificial, deviant, or even dispensable feature of life; instead, it is a natural, inevitable, and relentlessly necessary part of our world.

As art and fiction have increasingly come to dominate our culture, we have obtained a dissatisfaction with the thinness, the inadequacy of literal truth - a sense that it fails to do justice to the rich possibilities of language and experience."--BOOK JACKET.