People Lie. Lies permeate every aspect of our lives - from advertising and politics to medicine and education. Is society to blame for this? Or is our brain naturally tuned to distort information? Where is the line between self-deception and optimism? And in what situations is untruth more valuable than truth? Science journalists Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler show how deception shaped humanity and reveal the role that lies play in the modern world. Based on the research of scientists, criminal reports and everyday stories, they explain how to benefit from delusions and stop considering other people as madmen because of their strange views. And why the truth is not always what it seems.