Read our sample translation of Why Everyone is Always Right

About the book

Whether it’s a matter of the role of Islam in terrorist attacks, the safety of pesticides or the skin colour of St. Nicholas’ little helpers: why do two camps so often emerge that are both convinced they have a monopoly on wisdom? Why do we so love to dig ourselves into the trenches of our own rightness? In Why Everyone is Always Right Ruben Mersch tries to answer these questions through the connection between cockroaches and ethics, the low-hanging trousers of hiphoppers and the mystery of the clean student kitchen. In doing so he makes eager reference to the latest insights of psychologists, anthropologists, biologists, philosophers and eighteenth-century preachers with a predilection for billiards. His conclusion is sobering: not our reason but our emotions hold sway over our thinking.

Fortunately, Mersch adds, there are ways to counteract this. He presents these means to the reader captivatingly and with hilarious examples. Why Everyone is Always Right is the ideal book to give us more insight into the eccentricities of the human spirit.