At a Loss for Words: Conversation in the Age of Rage

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Synopsis
AN INSTANT #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off digs deep into six words whose meanings have been distorted and weaponized in recent years—including democracy, freedom and truth—and asks whether we can reclaim their value.As co-host of CBC Radio's As It Happens, Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week. On top of her stellar writing and reporting career, those 25,000 interviews have given her a unique vantage point on the crucial subject at the heart of her new book—how, in these polarizing years, words that used to define civil society and social justice are being put to work for a completely different political agenda. Or they are being bleached of their meaning as the values they represent are mocked and distorted. As Off writes, &“If our language doesn&’t have a means to express an idea, then the idea itself is gone—even the range of thought is diminished.&” And, as she argues, that&’s a dangerous loss.In six, wide-ranging chapters, Off explores the mutating meanings and the changing political impact of her six chosen words—freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes—unpacking the forces, from right and left, that have altered them beyond recognition. She also shows what happens when we lose our shared political vocabulary: we stop being able to hear each other, let alone speak with each other in meaningful ways. This means we stop being able to reckon with the complexity of the crises we face, leaving us prey to conspiracy theories, autocrats and the machinations of greed. At a Loss for Words is both an elegy and a call to arms.
Copyright:
2024

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9781039008441
Related ISBNs:
9781039008434
Publisher:
Random House of Canada
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Longstretch Media Inc.
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Language Arts, Communication, Politics and Government
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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