Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer resigned from the New Yorker after admitting he had made up quotes from Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Photograph: Colin Hattersley
Jonah Lehrer resigned from the New Yorker after admitting he had made up quotes from Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Photograph: Colin Hattersley

Jonah Lehrer's publisher withdraws second book

This article is more than 11 years old
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt stops sales of How We Decide, a 2009 work from writer who made up Bob Dylan quotes

The writer who made up quotes from Bob Dylan has had a second book withdrawn from sale due to concerns over inaccuracies, his publishers have announced.

Jonah Lehrer's book How We Decide will no longer be sold after its publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, checked its content.

The book, published in 2009, explores how people make decisions and how those decisions can be improved.

Lehrer's first book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, remains on sale, Lori Glazer, executive director of publicity for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said in an email.

Lehrer resigned as a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine last summer after admitting he had made up quotes from singer and songwriter Dylan in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt immediately stopped selling it.

Lehrer, a science journalist and author, became the latest non-fiction writer to admit making up material, saying in a statement that he had lied to journalist Michael Moynihan of the online publication Tablet, who had questioned Lehrer about the authenticity of quotes in a section devoted to Dylan.

The inquiry by Moynihan followed earlier allegations that Lehrer had re-purposed quotes in several New Yorker blogs.

Moynihan reported on Friday, in an article on the Daily Beast, that he had provided Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with some problematic passages from How We Decide.

Lehrer's literary agent could not be reached for comment on Friday.

Other books that have caused controversy over accuracy in recent years include James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and Herman Rosenblat's cancelled 2009 Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived.

Most viewed

Most viewed