Books of the Left and Right

The results from Valdis Krebs’ analysis of political books bought from Amazon is fascinating.

Two groups typically emerge from the data: people who read liberally oriented books and people who read conservatively oriented books with a couple of books that both groups read. He ran his analysis again a few days ago and found not two groups but three — roughly: 1) pro-Obama, 2) anti-Bush, and 3) conservative — and no books that the groups read in common.

It could also be an important resource for ‘checking’ on our reading habits. Surely, if we find ourselves reading books exclusively from one camp we would be effectively indoctrinating ourselves: reading our way to ignorance?

via Kottke

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