But What If We're Wrong?

Thinking About the Present as If It Were the Past

By: Chuck Klosterman

Narrated by: Chuck Klosterman, Fiona Hardingham

New York Times best-selling author

But What If We're Wrong? visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past. Chuck Klosterman asks questions that are profound in their simplicity: How certain are we about our understanding of gravity? How certain are we about our understanding of time? What will be the defining memory of rock music 500 years from today? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? How seriously should we view the content of television? Are all sports destined for extinction? Is it possible that the greatest artist of our era is currently unknown (or - weirder still - widely known but entirely disrespected)? Is it possible that we "overrate" democracy? And perhaps most disturbing, is it possible that we've reached the end of knowledge? Klosterman visualizes the contemporary world as it will appear to those who'll perceive it as the distant past.

Kinetically slingshotting through a broad spectrum of objective and subjective problems, But What If We're Wrong? is built on interviews with a variety of creative thinkers - George Saunders, David Byrne, Jonathan Lethem, Kathryn Schulz, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Greene, Junot Díaz, Amanda Petrusich, Ryan Adams, Nick Bostrom, Dan Carlin, and Richard Linklater, among others - interwoven with the type of high-wire humor and nontraditional analysis only Klosterman would dare to attempt. It's a seemingly impossible achievement: a book about the things we cannot know, explained as if we did. It's about how we live now, once "now" has become "then".

©2016 Chuck Klosterman (P)2016 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Full of intelligence and insights, as the author gleefully turns ideas upside down to better understand them.... This book will become a popular book club selection because it makes readers think. Replete with lots of nifty, whimsical footnotes, this clever, speculative book challenges our beliefs with jocularity and perspicacity.” (Kirkus, starred review)

“Klosterman conducts a series of intriguing thought experiments in this delightful new book.... Klosterman’s trademark humor and unique curiosity propel the reader through the book. He remains one of the most insightful critics of pop culture writing today and this is his most thought-provoking and memorable book yet.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

“A spin class for the brain.... Klosterman challenges readers to reexamine the stability of basic concepts, and in doing so broadens our perspectives.... An engaging and entertaining workout for the mind led by one of today’s funniest and most thought-provoking writers.” (Library Journal, starred review)

WTF Chuck?

Any additional comments?

Dear Chuck,
I was delighted to see a new release from you pop up. And I hear your words in the unique style that is all your own, but instead of your familiar snarky nasally voice, it's a text to speech bot modeled after one of the spice girls. This voice is completely out of place and I keep rewinding it in my head to imagine what it sounds like when you say it.
Next time please just narrate it yourself, even if it takes longer.

Meandering at points, but interesting

Klosterman takes a look at our present presumptions about music, literature, politics, and science and asks the title question "What if we're wrong?" What if The Beatles are not going to be remembered as the greatest rock band? What if football dies away? What or who would replace them?

It's a fun thought experiment, but one that ultimately ended up being too long. I frequently found my mind wander away from the book, and even as I read it my attention was drawn to other things.

Unfortunately, even immediately after finishing the book, there are parts that I have forgotten already. I think a large part of this is because this is a novel with no consequence. Yes, it is important to remain inquisitive about the world; however, this book read like a super-long clickbait article.

There are some interesting theories in here, but I wonder if I'll even remember them when I look back on my 2016 booklist, let alone in the murky future Klosterman writes about.

His best work yet!

an addicting, provocative and well researched piece of media archeology, pop science and cultural anthropology!

Wish Klosterman self-narrated!

This was good but would be even better of Klosterman narrated it himself. The narrator is fine though.

Chuck is back with greatness

Loved this book! Amazing connections and narrative flow, connecting everything from Elvis to tsunamis. Wish Klosterman had read it though, his moments in the narration (very beginning and end) add delicious personality to the text. Download this book!

Eye opening

This is one of the greatest books I've "read" ... Some real eye-opening information that helps you look at reality and your assumptions differently and challenge the status quo.

klosterman goes long...

This book is more dense than his erlier work and is driven I suspect by an ambition to go deeper. While full of interesting ideas as always, I bet some would be turned off by this books tone and the less joke peppered conversational style the author is known for. All in all tho I think this is a great effort from a towering intellect. well done sir!

This book makes you talk a stoner for a few weeks

But What If We're Wrong is a book that humbles you because confronts you not only with how much you don't know, but that so much of what you do know is subject to change and reinterpretation.

A quirky provoker of thoughts

Any additional comments?

Quirky and whimsical set of essays (at least they feel like essays) framing how we think about ideas (literature, music, historical events, science), and how those thoughts morph over time. Into this broad thought experiment, Klosterman explores some beliefs from the past that now seem ridiculous as a way to question what we believe now and how it will be viewed in the future. He admits the impossibility of coming to any firm or even likely conclusions -- for example, he notes that we cannot help but frame future discussions in the parameters of the present day, and attempts to imagine the future are almost always doomed to fail. But the near impossiblity of the task doesn't make the mental gymnastics any less interesting. After logical contortions, extensive hypotheticals, and discussions with experts in a variety of areas, you come away knowing how much you likely don't know and how tenuous our current vantage point is.

Great concept, hard to follow.

It makes me feel terrible to rate the book low, I was very excited to read it based on the description. It was difficult to stick with, I usually don't abandon a book but I could not finish this one. It felt disjointed, like the author went off on a tangent, beat the dead horse, and then finally picked back up. I suppose reading this in the traditional sense would be a better experience. It might just not be a book to have in the audible format.