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The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi (Routledge Hindu Studies Series)
by Makarand R. ParanjapeWho is responsible for the Mahatma’s death? Just one single, but determined, fanatic, the whole ideology of Hindu nationalism, the ruling Congress-led government whichfailed to protect him, or a vast majority of Indians and their descendants who considered Gandhi irrelevant? Such questions mean that Gandhi, even after his tragic and brutal death, continues to haunt India – perhaps more effectively in his afterlife than when he was alive. The Death and Afterlife of Mahatma Gandhi is a groundbreaking and profound analysis of the assassination of the ‘father of the nation’ and its after-effects. Paranjape argues that such a catastrophic event during the very birth pangs of a new nation placed a huge burden of Oedipal guilt on Indians, and that this is the reason for the massive repression of the murder in India’s political psyche. The enduring influence of Gandhi is analysed, including his spectral presence in Indian cinema. The book culminates in Paranjape’s reading of Gandhi’s last six months in Delhi, where, from the very edge of the grave, he wrought what was perhaps his greatest miracle, the saving of Delhi and thus of India itself from internecine bloodshed. This evocative and moving meditation into the meaning of the Mahatma’s death will be relevant to scholars of Indian political and cultural history, as well as those with an interest in Gandhi and contemporary India
The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story
by Aaron Bobrow-StrainOne of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All TimeWinner of the 2020 Pacific Northwest Book Award | Winner of the 2020 Washington State Book Award | Named a 2019 Southwest Book of the Year | Shortlisted for the 2019 Brooklyn Public Library Literary PrizeWhat happens when an undocumented teen mother takes on the U.S. immigration system?When Aida Hernandez was born in 1987 in Agua Prieta, Mexico, the nearby U.S. border was little more than a worn-down fence. Eight years later, Aida’s mother took her and her siblings to live in Douglas, Arizona. By then, the border had become one of the most heavily policed sites in America.Undocumented, Aida fought to make her way. She learned English, watched Friends, and, after having a baby at sixteen, dreamed of teaching dance and moving with her son to New York City. But life had other plans. Following a misstep that led to her deportation, Aida found herself in a Mexican city marked by violence, in a country that was not hers. To get back to the United States and reunite with her son, she embarked on a harrowing journey. The daughter of a rebel hero from the mountains of Chihuahua, Aida has a genius for survival—but returning to the United States was just the beginning of her quest.Taking us into detention centers, immigration courts, and the inner lives of Aida and other daring characters, The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez reveals the human consequences of militarizing what was once a more forgiving border. With emotional force and narrative suspense, Aaron Bobrow-Strain brings us into the heart of a violently unequal America. He also shows us that the heroes of our current immigration wars are less likely to be perfect paragons of virtue than complex, flawed human beings who deserve justice and empathy all the same.
The Death and Life of Main Street
by Miles OrvellFor more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis. Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.
The Death and Life of Malcolm X
by Peter GoldmanThe Death and Life of Malcolm X provides a dramatic portrait of one of the most important black leaders of the twentieth century. Focusing on Malcolm X's rise to prominence and the final year of his life, the book details his rift with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, leading to death threats and eventually assassination at the hands of a death squad. In a new preface for this edition, Peter Goldman reflects on the forty years since the book's first publication and considers new information based on FBI surveillance that has since come to light.
The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca
by Anthony F. WallaceThis book tells the story of the late colonial and early reservation history of the Seneca Indians, and of the prophet Handsome Lake, his visions, and the moral and religious revitalization of an American Indian society that he and his followers achieved in the years around 1800.
The Death in their Eyes: What Perpetrator Images Perpetrate (Studies in Latin American and Spanish History #12)
by Vicente Sánchez-BioscaImages that embody the point of view of the perpetrators of violent crimes, or their accomplices, force us to look at the pain of victims through the eyes of those who caused it. Accompanied by over sixty visuals of historically infamous violence, The Death in their Eyes goes beyond the visible aspects of images to reveal what has been left outside of the frame. Covering human abuse and humiliation at Abu Ghraib, the Auschwitz Album, religious desecration during the Spanish Civil War, an unfinished Nazi propaganda film made at the Warsaw Ghetto in the spring of 1942, and detainees at the S-21 torture center in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, this volume proposes a rigorous new methodology for analyzing perpetrator images, in photography and film, that continue to be used and re-appropriated in today’s media. Content warning: This book contains images of victims of murder and torture which are essential to the author’s analysis.
The Death of A Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation
by Jarol B. ManheimA corporate campaign is an organized assault on the reputation of a company that has offended some interest group. Although corporate campaigns often involve political, economic, and legal tactics, they are centered around the media, where protagonists attempt to redefine the image--and undermine the reputation--of the target company. It is a strategy most frequently employed by unions but is also employed by special interests, such as environmental or human rights groups. Sometimes it is even employed by one corporation against another. It is a rapidly growing phenomenon that is still unknown to the general public, to most academics and journalists, and is rarely understood by the corporations that find themselves on the firing line. The Death of a Thousand Cuts argues and demonstrates that corporate campaigns are a distinctive phenomenon whose manifestations are today ubiquitous in both the marketplace and the media. This volume examines, in considerable detail, the history, strategy, tactics, effects, consequences, and likely future directions of the corporate campaign and of its nonlabor-based cousin, the anticorporate campaign. The book is based on ample sources and methods, among them an extensive review and analysis of media coverage, news releases, previous scholarship, union publications, campaign materials, interviews and conversations with individuals who have experienced corporate campaigns, public presentations by labor leaders and others, correspondence, Internet postings, case law summaries, documents, videotapes, and other materials. Through original data and interpretation, this book adds context and integration to these materials thus giving them new meaning. Key features of this outstanding new book include: * A thorough and clear explanation of what a corporate campaign is and how it differs from other more mundane "public relations" campaigns. * A detailed examination of strategies and tactics that includes their historical development. Some of the more high profile target companies in recent years include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Campbell's Soup, Federal Express, General Dynamics, Home Depot, International Paper, K-Mart, Nike, Texaco, Walmart, Starbucks, and UPS. * Hundreds of examples that help explain such contemporary events as the anti-sweatshop movement on college campuses, the living wage movement, and the protests against the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. * A lengthy appendix contains abbreviated descriptions of nearly 200 corporate campaigns waged by labor unions and various advocacy groups since the idea of the corporate campaign was first developed in the 1960's.
The Death of Affirmative Action?: Racialized Framing and the Fight Against Racial Preference in College Admissions (Sociology of Diversity)
by J. Scott Carter Cameron LippardAffirmative action in US college admissions has inspired fierce debate as well as several US Supreme Court cases. In this significant study, leading US professors J. Scott Carter and Cameron D. Lippard provide an in-depth examination of the issue using sociological, policy and legal perspectives to frame both pro- and anti-affirmative action arguments, within past and present Supreme Court cases. With affirmative action policy under constant attack, this is a crucial book that not only explains the state of this policy but also further deconstructs the state of race and racism in American society today.
The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago
by Alison MountzInvestigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant &“reception center&” on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia&’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years. In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights.Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.
The Death of Authentic Primitive Art: And Other Tales of Progress
by Shelly ErringtonIn this lucid, witty, and forceful book, Shelly Errington argues that Primitive Art was invented as a new type of art object at the beginning of the twentieth century but that now, at the century's end, it has died a double but contradictory death. Authenticity and primitivism, both attacked by cultural critics, have died as concepts. At the same time, the penetration of nation-states, the tourist industry, and transnational corporations into regions that formerly produced these artifacts has severely reduced supplies of "primitive art," bringing about a second "death."Errington argues that the construction of the primitive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and the kinds of objects chosen to exemplify it) must be understood as a product of discourses of progress—from the nineteenth-century European narrative of technological progress, to the twentieth-century narrative of modernism, to the late- twentieth-century narrative of the triumph of the free market. In Part One she charts a provocative argument ranging through the worlds of museums, art theorists, mail-order catalogs, boutiques, tourism, and world events, tracing a loosely historical account of the transformations of meanings of primitive art in this century. In Part Two she explores an eclectic collection of public sites in Mexico and Indonesia—a national museum of anthropology, a cultural theme park, an airport, and a ninth-century Buddhist monument (newly refurbished)—to show how the idea of the primitive can be used in the interests of promoting nationalism and economic development.Errington's dissection of discourses about progress and primitivism in the contemporary world is both a lively introduction to anthropological studies of art institutions and a dramatic new contribution to the growing field of cultural studies.
The Death of Christ: The Bible and Popular Culture vs Archaeological and Historical Evidence
by Steven RutledgeWhat was the world like, and what was going on in it, around the time of Jesus’ death? This study examines this very question, and also seeks to place Jesus in his larger historical context, as a non-citizen resident of the Roman Empire living in Judaea and Galilee in the 20s and 30s AD. The book explores the larger background and context to some of the major power-brokers of the Roman Empire in Jesus’ day, including the emperor Tiberius, his ambitious Praetorian Prefect Sejanus, Judaea’s governor Pontius Pilate, and the client king who governed Galilee, Herod Antipas. It further explores some of the larger historical and cultural context and background of some of the characters who parade through the gospel accounts, including the treacherous informant Judas Iscariot, the tax collector turned apostle, Matthew, and the gruff centurion whose servant Jesus was said to have healed. The study also considers the nature of Jesus’ radical resistance to the Roman Empire, and seeks to contextualize it through comparison with other resistance movements. Attempts to recover the historical Jesus have sought to put him in his immediate context of ancient Galilee, Judaea, and the Jewish community to which he belonged. Instead this book gives the Roman historical background to the time and place of his ministry and death. Cast into relief against the much larger picture of the greater Roman world of which he was a part, the ministry of Jesus is quite radical indeed.
The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation, 1800–2000 (Christianity and Society in the Modern World)
by Callum G. BrownThe Death of Christian Britain examines how the nation’s dominant religious culture has been destroyed. Callum Brown challenges the generally held view that secularization was a long and gradual process dating from the industrial revolution. Instead, he argues that it has been a catastrophic and abrupt cultural revolution starting in the 1960s. Using the latest techniques of gender analysis, and by listening to people's voices rather than purely counting heads, the book offers new formulations of religion and secularization. In this expanded second edition, Brown responds to commentary on his ideas, reviews the latest research, and provides new evidence to back his claims.
The Death of Death: The Scientific Possibility of Physical Immortality and its Moral Defense (Copernicus Books)
by David Wood José CordeiroIs death inevitable? Until now, the history of mankind has been marked by this fatal fact. Religions, borders and progress are born from an ancient fear of death, comfort from this fear man often found only in religious paradigms. But according to José Luis Cordeiro and David Wood, the incontrovertible fact of death is no longer an absolute certainty - science and technology are preparing to tear down the final frontier: that of immortality.This accessible book provides insight into recent exponential advances in artificial intelligence, tissue regeneration, stem cell treatment, organ printing, cryopreservation, and genetic therapies that, for the first time in human history, offer a realistic chance to solve the problem of the aging of the human body. In this book, Cordeiro and Wood not only present all the major developments, initiatives, and ideas for eternal life, they also show why there are a number of good arguments for seeing death for what it is: the last undefeated disease.Enter any drugstore or bookstore, and we confronted with a mountain of nonsense concerning the aging process. Society seems obsessed with aging. That is why The Death of Death is such a refreshing delight, able to cut through the hype and reveal a balanced, authoritative, and lucid discussion of this controversial topic. It summarizes the astonishing breakthroughs made recently in revealing how science may one day conquer the aging process.Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist and author of The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything We are entering a Fantastic Voyage into life extension, crossing different bridges that will take us to indefinite life spans. The Death of Death explains clearly how we might soon reach longevity escape velocity and live long enough to live forever. Ray Kurzweil, co-author of Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever and co-founder of Singularity University The Death of Death is a truly revolutionary book. This is a visionary book that confronts us with the terrible reality of aging, and its authors are friends and connoisseurs of the subject. I believe that the authoritative and exhaustive description of this crusade that José and David make in this excellent book will accelerate this process. Forward! Aubrey de Grey, founder of LEV (Longevity Escape Velocity) Foundation and co-author of Ending Aging
The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Is Changing Our Lives
by Frances CairncrossThe author has substantially rewritten and updated the book, with 70 percent new data, fresh analysis, and new company examples to offer a look at the economic landscape ahead. She argues that the story today is not only the diminishing importance of distance, but also the mobility and ubiquity of technology. New material covers the implications of recent events, debates and with an updated "Trendspotter's Guide" that offers a snapshot of the new opportunities and challenges we face in a wireless world, this timely book will help all of us envision and enjoy an increasingly connected future.
The Death of Humanity: and the Case for Life
by Richard WeikartDo you believe human life is inherently valuable? Unfortunately, in the secularized age of state-sanctioned euthanasia and abortion-on-demand, many are losing faith in the simple value of human life. To the disillusioned, human beings are a cosmic accident whose intrinsic value is worth no more than other animals.The Death of Humanity explores our culture's declining respect for the sanctity of human life, drawing on philosophy and history to reveal the dark road ahead for society if we lose our faith in human life.
The Death of Innocents
by Helen PrejeanFrom the author of the national bestseller Dead Man Walking comes a brave and fiercely argued new book that tests the moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we're executing innocent men? Two cases in point are Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man with an IQ of 65, and Joseph Roger O'Dell. Both were convicted of murder on flimsy evidence (O'Dell's principal accuser was a jailhouse informant who later recanted his testimony). Both were executed in spite of numerous appeals. Sister Helen Prejean watched both of them die.As she recounts these men's cases and takes us through their terrible last moments, Prejean brilliantly dismantles the legal and religious arguments that have been used to justify the death penalty. Riveting, moving, and ultimately damning, The Death of Innocents is a book we dare not ignore.From the Trade Paperback edition.ng on the forensic evidence, which he claimed would exonerate him, but the courts refused. After his execution on July 23, 1997, the state destroyed the evidence. As a result, its conviction of O'Dell could never be scrutinized. "The reader of this book will be the first 'jury' with access to all the evidence the trial juries never saw," says Prejean, who accompanied both men to their executions. By using the withheld evidence to reconstruct the crimes for which these two men were convicted, Prejean shows how race, prosecutorial ambition, poverty, election cycles, and publicity play far too great a role in determining who dies and who lives.Prejean traces the historical underpinnings of executions in this country, demonstrating that it is no accident that over 80 percent of executions in the past twenty-five years have been carried out in the former slave states. She also raises profound constitutional questions about an appeals system that decides most death cases on procedural grounds without ever examining their merits.To date, 113 wrongfully convicted persons have been freed from death row. If constitutional protections-due process, assistance of counsel, and equal justice under law-are truly being respected, how is it possible that these people were convicted in the first place? And how can we accept a system so rife with error?Sister Helen Prejean takes us with her on her spiritual journey as she accompanies two possibly innocent human beings to their deaths at the hands of the state. Prejean implores us to reflect on what is perhaps the core moral issue of the death penalty debate: Honorable people disagree about the justice of executing the guilty, but can anyone argue about the injustice of executing the innocent?From the Hardcover edition.
The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands
by Margaret ReganDrawing from her 10 years reporting on the US-Mexico border, Regan, a journalist who writes for the Tucson Weekly and other publications, presents the stories of migrants from northern Mexico who came into the US through the Tucson Sector of Arizona after urban crossings became increasingly patrolled. She relates how 14-year-old Josseline Hernández left with her younger brother in a group heading to Los Angeles, but became ill from prolonged exposure and was left in the desert to die by her guide. Regan explores her and other migrant deaths in the Arizona desert between 2001 and 2009, drawing from interviews with migrants, the Border Patrol, vigilantes, members of the human rights group No More Deaths, and Tohono O'odham tribal members, on whose land 83 bodies were found, to elucidate the problem. There is no index or bibliography. Annotation ©2010 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution
by Carolyn MerchantHow the scientific revolution sanctioned the exploitation of nature, commercial expansion, and the subjugation of women.
The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution
by Carolyn MerchantUPDATED 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION WITH 2020 PREFACEAn examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.
The Death of Old Yokohama: In the Great Japanese Earthquake of 1923 (Routledge Library Editions: Japan)
by Otis M PooleIt was almost noon in the picturesque city of Yokohama on Saturday, September 1st 1923 when the first sway of one of the world’s most destructive earthquakes was felt. The first great shock lasted for four minutes and in that time every building in the city was destroyed, together with 100,000 of its Japanese inhabitants and one eighth of its foreign community. Other shocks followed and then fire which swept through the ruins with hurricane speed, suffocating and burning to death thousands trapped in wreckage or trying to flee. A first-hand account of the disaster told by a survivor, this accurate and authentic account was written immediately after the earthquake and is here published with only minor additions and corrections
The Death of Public Knowledge?: How Free Markets Destroy the General Intellect (Goldsmiths Press / PERC Papers)
by Aeron DavisA collection of short, sharp essays exploring the value of shared and accessible public knowledge in the face of its erosion.The Death of Public Knowledge argues for the value and importance of shared, publicly accessible knowledge, and suggests that the erosion of its most visible forms, including public service broadcasting, education, and the network of public libraries, has worrying outcomes for democracy.With contributions from both activists and academics, this collection of short, sharp essays focuses on different aspects of public knowledge, from libraries and education to news media and public policy. Together, the contributors record the stresses and strains placed upon public knowledge by funding cuts and austerity, the new digital economy, quantification and target-setting, neoliberal politics, and inequality. These pressures, the authors contend, not only hinder democracies, but also undermine markets, economies, and social institutions and spaces everywhere.Covering areas of international public concern, these polemical, accessible texts include reflections on the fate of schools and education, the takeover of public institutions by private interests, and the corruption of news and information in the financial sector. They cover the compromised Greek media during recent EU negotiations, the role played by media and political elites in the Irish property bubble, the compromising of government policy by corporate interests in the United States and Korea, and the squeeze on public service media in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States.Individually and collectively, these pieces spell out the importance of maintaining public, shared knowledge in all its forms, and offer a rallying cry for doing so, asserting the need for strong public, financial, and regulatory support.ContributorsToril Aalberg, Ian Anstice, Philip Augar, Rodney Benson, Aeron Davis, Des Freedman, Wayne Hope, Ken Jones, Bong-hyun Lee, Colin Leys, Andrew McGettigan, Michael Moran, Aristotelis Nikolaidis, Justin Schlosberg, Henry Silke, Roger Smith, Peter Thompson, Janine R. Wedel, Karel Williams, Kate Wright
The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice among the Worst of the Worst
by Robert BleckerFor twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.
The Death of Rhythm and Blues
by Nelson GeorgeThis passionate and provocative book tells the complete story of black music in the last fifty years, and in doing so outlines the perilous position of black culture within white American society. In a fast-paced narrative, Nelson George’s book chronicles the rise and fall of “race music” and its transformation into the R&B that eventually dominated the airwaves only to find itself diluted and submerged as crossover music. .
The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values
by Tammy BruceIf you believe children should be seduced into warped sexual behavior by the Gay Elite, if you think confessed murderers should be set free by defense attorneys who know how to wield the race card, if you feel promiscuous gay men should be empowered to spread AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, don’t read this book. But if you’ve always suspected that factions on the Left are trying to destroy the values that define our civilization, this book proves it. Through the pages ofThe Death of Right and Wrong, author, activist, and pundit Tammy Bruce takes you inside the chilling world of the Left—a place where morals and decency have been turned on their heads and the crisp distinction between Right and Wrong has been blurred into a mushy, gray mess. In this world, the Gay Elite exploit our children—under the guise of tolerance and education—to satisfy their sexual obsessions. In this world, the Black Elite laud convicted murderers as community heroes and award-winning “artists. ” In this world, the Feminist Elite fawn over a woman who mercilessly killed all five of her children. And much more that will offend your sense of decency and threaten your basic values. Ms. Bruce smashes the facades of “Tolerance,” “Understanding,” and other Leftist slogans to reveal the ugly truth of their agenda. As a gay activist and former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women, she witnessed firsthand the Left’s attempts to undermine our millennia-old code of morals and values, aided by politically biased media and academia. And if the news headlines of today are any indication, they’re winning the culture war. Unless we act now, we are doomed at the hands of special interest groups on the Left who want nothing more than to undermine our ability to judge right from wrong in order to foist their own selfish, anything-goes society on the rest of us. This book reveals what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and what we can do to restore decency in our society. You’ll discover powerful tools in these pages to help you understand the psychology of the Left—what makes them tick and, more importantly, how to stop them from eroding our values completely. Full of controversial opinions and countless examples ripped from the headlines,The Death of Right and Wrongis a powerful, eye-opening book that you won’t want to be without.
The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World--And What We Can Do
by Steven BrillHow did we become a world where facts—shared truths—have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country, globally? How have we allowed the proliferation of alternative facts, hoaxes, even conspiracy theories, to destroy our trust in institutions, leaders, and legitimate experts? Best-selling journalist Steven Brill documents the forces and people, from Silicon Valley to Madison Avenue to Moscow to Washington, that have created and exploited this world of chaos and division—and offers practical solutions for what we can do about it."A precise description of the punishment cell we have built around our minds and the first few steps back towards light and air." –Timothy Snyder, Author of On Tyranny and Professor of History, Yale University&“A seminal, ground-breaking, documented and honest examination of two of the central dilemmas of our time—what is truth and where to find it.&” —Bob Woodward, associate editor at The Washington PostAs the cofounder of NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, Steven Brill has observed the rise of fake news from a front-row seat. In The Death of Truth, with startling, often terrifying clarity, he explains how we got here—and how we can get back to a world where truth matters.None of this—conspiracy theories embraced, expertise ridiculed, empirical evidence ignored—has happened by accident. Brill takes us inside the decisions made by executives in Silicon Valley to code the algorithms embedded in their social media platforms to maximize profits by pushing divisive content. He unravels the ingenious creation of automated advertising buying systems that reward that click-baiting content and penalize reliable news publishers, and describes how the use of these ad-financed, misinformation platforms by politicians, hucksters, and conspiracy theorists deceives ordinary citizens. He documents how the most powerful adversaries of America have used American-made social media and advertising tools against us with massive disinformation campaigns—and how, with the development of generative artificial intelligence, everything could get exponentially worse unless we act. The stakes are high for all of us, including Brill himself, whose company's role in exposing Russian disinformation operations resulted in a Russian agent targeting him and his family.Crucially, Brill lays out a series of provocative but realistic prescriptions for what we can do now to reverse course—proposals certain to stir debate and even action that could curb the power of big tech to profit from division and chaos, tamp down polarization, and restore the trust necessary to bring us together.