The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment

Denery (Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World), an associate professor of history at Bowdoin College, takes a thoughtful, if academic, stroll through the complicated and pervasive art of lying: "With one notable exception, it is not a history of specific lies, of who said what to whom, but a history of responses to a very fundamental, if straightforward, question: Is it ever acceptable to lie?" He looks back at a number of historical, theological, and philosophical arguments to trace the evolution of responses and cultural shifts. Denery studies the attempts to interpret the Devil's actions in the Garden of Eden, the debate over whether God can lie, and finally, when it's acceptable for mere mortals to bend the truth. "This is a book about the problem of lying as it appeared to people from the fourth until the eighteenth centuries," he notes, as well as "how the problem of lying became our problem." Though it's a fascinating topic, this is a deep piece written for scholars and academics: complicated, dense, and slow. It has much to offer those who can penetrate Denery's style, as he writes from a true expert's position, but casual readers may have issues. (Jan.)