Danny Wallace - I Can't Believe You Just Said That

Rating: 5/5

Review :
Entertaining and thought-provoking

I thought this was an excellent book.  I tried it on a bit of a whim, not knowing quite what to expect, and it turned out to be witty, intelligent and genuinely insightful about the things which make people behave rudely, why such behaviour may be becoming more prevalent and, crucially, the damage it does to us both as individuals and as a society.

The great thing about I Can't Believe You Just Said That is that it is extremely readable and entertaining while saying genuinely important things.  When my copy first arrived I thought I'd have a quick look at the first few pages and read it properly sometime later.  Instead, I was hooked and read the whole thing straight through.  Danny Wallace is a very engaging writer who manages to be funny, honest and self-deprecating while describing situations and personal responses to rudeness which everyone will recognise. 

The book begins with the Hot Dog Incident, in which a café-owner was staggeringly rude to Wallace who is a customer.  As a result, he went off and did a lot of serious research into rudeness, its causes and effects.  He commissioned a survey and also talked to a lot of academics and others who have looked into the topic in detail.  The results are fascinating – and rather scary.  The severe damage to personal performance caused by someone being rude is positively terrifying (this includes medical errors increasing hugely if someone, not necessarily the patient, is even mildly rude to a practitioner, for example, and the effect persists for a long time) and the corrosive effect of general rudeness on groups and entire nations is also disturbing.  There are also some uplifting accounts of ways of combating rudeness and some thoughtful (and sometimes very witty) analysis of its origins in all sorts of groups of people.

I can warmly recommend this book.  I found it extremely entertaining as well as being very thought-provoking, and I hope it is very widely read.

(I received a review copy from the publisher.)