---
product_id: 50681627
title: "Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News"
brand: "kevin young"
price: "293 Lei"
currency: RON
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.ro/products/50681627-bunk-the-rise-of-hoaxes-humbug-plagiarists-phonies-post-facts
store_origin: RO
region: Romania
---

# Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

**Brand:** kevin young
**Price:** 293 Lei
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News by kevin young
- **How much does it cost?** 293 Lei with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.ro](https://www.desertcart.ro/products/50681627-bunk-the-rise-of-hoaxes-humbug-plagiarists-phonies-post-facts)

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## Description

Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    This book is a mess.
  

*by R***R on Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2018*

Because I have much respect for Kevin Young as a poet and intellectual, I was wholly disappointed with Bunk. This book is a mess. Apparently, the publisher gave Mr. Young carte blanche, assuming—given his good reputation—that he knew what he was doing.The book reads mostly like a survey of every hoax, scam, con, fraud, and boondoggle fabricated in America. Young heaps upon us stacks and stacks of examples that catalogue this history of “bunk.” But beyond cataloguing these examples, too many of them in minute detail, it remains unclear what Young is trying to argue: there is no overarching thesis. As a result, Young rambles, bushwhacks, digresses, regroups, repeats (himself), then sets off again, tediously picking apart example upon example with no apparent focus other than to show that he’s a five-star academic.Perhaps the silliest digression occurs when, in discussing the denial of humanity to persons of color--underscored by the protest, “Are we not men?”—Young attempts to draw a connection to D-E-V-O, the 1980s new wave band, who used the same question in one of their songs, “Jocko Homo.” But D-E-V-0 was talking about the dehumanization of robotics and automation, a theme that framed their entire act. In other words, as Young rakes in every pop-cultural reference he can conjure, he betrays an insecurity that ill-serves his project.Much of the time Young talks of race, as we would expect of a writer so deeply invested issues of race. But, again and again, he’s stating the obvious: America has always been a profoundly racist country. We know that. Not once, in his many explications of racism, does he offer a surprise or a penetrating insight that we can pursue to an enlightened point.And then: much of the time he doesn’t talk of race, as when he’s recounting Clifford Irving’s fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Somewhere underneath all of this, perhaps Young is striving to show that “bunk” is quintessentially American, lying at the heart of American confidence and bravado?  It’s never clear because Young is never definitive. And so the reader is left wondering, What’s this about?Repeatedly, Young mentions “The Age of Euphemism,” a topic it seems he’s working up to, but then he never delivers. Only in the final chapter, “Coda,” does he explain what this is and even then the chapter is little more than fragments: notes on the book he should have written. His point seems to be that the all-American hoax has devolved into something toxic. He writes, “Part of the pleasure of the nineteenth century’s [hoaxes] . . . was finding oneself fooled …; the humbug and the audience often proved unlikely yet likable collaborators.” Really? After chapters of explication to make clear the thoroughly abusive treatment of people of color in American sideshows, scams, and so on, this is the conclusion Young would offer?As for the Age of Euphemism, isn’t ours more the Age of Hyperbole, as conspiracy mongers and incendiary divisionists shout that the sky is falling? that all immigrants are criminals? that all progressives are mobsters? that our nation should build walls and more bombs to protect itself from an invidious world?Young’s best chapter is “Blacker Than Thou,” about Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who masqueraded as black (and in the process appropriated black culture for personal gain). Young is thoroughly present in this chapter, personal and personable, and you can see why it was published as a separate essay in the anthology, The Fire This Time. I sighed with relief when I got to this chapter and was tempted to say, “Where have you been, man?” Had Young dropped the academic voice he favors for most of the book—burdened as it is with sweeping pronouncements and convoluted connections—and instead, spoke more directly and more honestly, as he does in this chapter, he might have made Bunk worth the reader’s time.

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Bunk is in fact bunk because it is not really about hoaxes
  

*by R***R on Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2019*

This book is mildly interesting, if poorly organized and rambling, on the topic it is purportedly written - that being hoaxes, comment, fake news, and the like from the 1800s to the present day in America. As a history buff with a honors degree in the subject I enjoy reading studies of Americana.So I was not expecting to instead get this rambling list of hoaxes here and there with illogical explanations of how all hoaxes are basically racism perpetrated by white people. The moon hoax in the Sun? Antiblack racism. The fairy photo hoax? Racist. Fake child prodigies? Racist. While there are examples of actual racism in the book, by a quarter of the way through the extreme reaching to call everything in sight racist leaves me no doubt where the rest of this dismal book is going and I have no interest in finishing.

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Needs an editor and different marketing...
  

*by A***Y on Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2018*

An interesting book with a worthwhile purpose. Through startling examples the connection between race stereotypes and hoaxes is explored. There are two main problems: marketing and writing. The advertising for the book does not give a good indication of the material within. The writing is the major problem. Plodding and meandering, it is difficult even divine what the real purpose of many entire paragraphs are. A difficult book to read, it is a like running marathon in a rainstorm with a headwind. Needed a good editor.

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*Product available on Desertcart Romania*
*Store origin: RO*
*Last updated: 2026-02-12*