This book provides a novel approach to the introductory statistics course in that it seems to be missing the requisite chapter on probability that separates descriptive statistics from inference in other texts. The issues of probability and probability distributions are instead briefly handled by discussing probability in the context of confidence intervals and distributions in the context of population frequencies.

The book is in other respects similar to other introductory statistics texts, and is quite suitable for students who do not plan to continue studies in statistics.

The story deals with an interesting idea, as posed above. For the most part, it's on the predictable side but, the author, being a lover of History, puts painstaking details into the times. He even has footnotes at the bottom to explain various points.

That said, this book is more of a two star quality if you aren't a History enthusiast of the American Revolution. If you are, then this is about a three star book b/c of all the wonderful details. Story telling quality is below average.

The editor, Andrew Ross, describes this book as "an expanded edition" of a special issue of the journal "Social Text". Potential readers should be warned however that it is also an expurgated edition, from which Alan Sokal's celebrated parody of of recent socio-cultural jargon has been suppressed. One understands Professor Ross's chagrin at the cruel and unusual joke that Professor Sokal practised on him. However, the unadvertised deletion of Sokal's contribution is a hoax on the buyers of "Science Wars" who naturally expect to find in it the one item of the original publication that has received worldwide attention.

The subsequent reviewer found the current tome missing in scholarship, merely by not having reprinted Sokal's piece from the social text issue of the same name (science wars). If one cared to read through the book, however, one would notice a number of quite specific reasons for this: among these that the book is meant as a counter argument to Sokal, Levitt & Gross's readings of their fave foe: pomos and other dangerous 'leftists' (what does this mean?). It is no secret that these authors are fired by a profound hostility and unwillingness to engage with the material with which they are dealing. This has already been shown ad nauseam in the litterature (see for instance Callon's review in social studies of science). Nevertheless this book stands as a nice response to some of the worst nonsense that has come out of the sokal/gross tradition. Specifically one should not miss Hart's devastating analysis of Gross et al's 'scientific neutrality' and their analytical abilities in Higher Superstition. Other pieces such as Mike Lynch's are good too; some however, are merely perpetuating the current stand off in a nasty 'war' (among these both of Ross's pieces). So is this review, I presume. That said, I should stop. Read both sides before you judge, you might get to know a good bit about rhetorical wars from the putatively neutral and objective scientists (sokal, gross, koertge etc).