- This is a very angry little book, clearly written with a ferocious intelligence. It is superb, and deserves to be very widely read in these noxious, unravelling times.
- It's and excellent examination of the destruction of mature, fact-based political debate in modern Western countries, particularly in the US. Trump is a symptom not a cause.
- The details provided on Russian interference in US politics, not just in the 2016 election, are shocking.
- Explores the roots of our current malaise going back to the 60’s. The chapter headings tell it all: The Decline and Fall of Reason; The New Culture Wars; 'Moi' and the Rise of Subjectivity; The Vanishing of Reality; The Co-opting of Language; Filters, Silos and Tribes; Attention Deficit; 'The Firehose of Falsehood': Propaganda and Fake News; The Schadenfreude of the Trolls'.
- As you would expect from the brilliant former NYT books editor, the essay is dotted with literary allusions. Reflecting on Trump’s White House she quotes a character from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow: ‘...a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all round assholery.’
- The Epilogue takes us back to the US Constitution and to Jefferson and Washington and their speeches articulating warnings for future generations. Truths more relevant than ever.
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