The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life

This work offers a perspective on the causes of the social and economic problems that plague contemporary America. It examines the relationship between ethnicity and intelligence and presents the view that America's population is becoming polarized between an educated elite and uneducated poor.
The ability to manipulate information has become the single most important element of success. High intelligence is an increasingly precious raw material. But despite decades of fashionable denial, the overriding and insistent truth about intellectual ability is that it is endowed unequally.
In this audio presentation of "The Bell Curve," author Charles Murray explores the ways that low intelligence, independent of social, economic, or ethnic background, lies at the root of many of our social problems. He also discusses another taboo subject: that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups.
According to the authors, only by facing up to these differences can we accurately assess the nation's problems and make realistic plans to address them. However, if we accept that there are intelligence differences among groups, we must learn to avoid prejudicial assumptions about any individual of a given group whose intelligence level may be anywhere under the bell curve.