"Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood. In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories,...

A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture-and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks-Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common:...

"In Trust, Pete Buttigieg demonstrates how trust will be essential in order to face the unique challenges of the decades ahead. Trust is essential to the foundation of America's democracy, asserts Pete Buttigieg, the former presidential candidate and South Bend mayor. Yet, in a century warped by terrorism, financial collapse, Trumpist populism, systemic racism, and now a global pandemic, trust has been squandered, sacrificed, abused, stolen, or never...

"Some democracies are highly homogeneous. Others have long maintained a brutal racial or religious hierarchy, with some groups dominating and exploiting others. Never in history has a democracy succeeded in being both diverse and equal, treating members of many different ethnic or religious groups fairly. And yet achieving that goal is now central to the democratic project in countries around the world. It is, Yascha Mounk argues, the greatest experiment...

This is Not Propaganda is a Thomas Pynchon-like journey behind the enemy lines of the endless, multinational information war. In his signature style--by turns analytical, poetic, lurid, and funny--disinformation expert Peter Pomerantsev explores the contours of this new global order. He learns information tactics from protesters in Serbia, narco-warlords in Mexico, Fox News hosts in America, and the KGB officers who forced his own family into exile....

"Setting the great crisis of 2020 in broad historical perspective, Niall Ferguson challenges the conventional wisdom that our failure to cope better with disaster was solely a crisis of political leadership, as opposed to a more profound systemic problem. Disasters are by their very nature hard to predict. Pandemics, like earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises and wars, are not normally distributed; there is no cycle of history to help us anticipate...

In Panic Attack, nationally bestselling author and physician Nicole Saphier uncovers the hypocrisy and hysteria which has characterized so much of the American pandemic response. While journalists trumpeted the importance of following science to 2flatten the curve,3 they praised Governors Andrew Cuomo and Phil Murphy, who sanctioned ill-equipped nursing homes to take COVID-positive patients, leading to an enormous death spike for New York and New...

A "magisterial" (Sunday Times) illumination of how books were used in war across the twentieth century--both as weapons and as agents for peace. We tend not to talk about books and war in the same breath--one ranks among humanity's greatest inventions, the other among its most terrible. But as esteemed literary historian Andrew Pettegree demonstrates, the two are deeply intertwined. The Book at War explores the various roles that books have played...

"Taking joy in suffering is more human than we'd like to admit. The cruelty of the Trump administration's policies and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets are intimately connected. Shared cruelty and the delight it brings are critical moments of connection for white supremacists, a fact that is not new. Adam Serwer has been chronicling our political landscape for the last decade. He is one of the most resonant voices of our time, relentless...

Building "The Wall" would cost less than half of what we spend to educate illegal immigrants every year, Illegal immigration costs American taxpayers $116 billion a year, Sixty-two percent of naturalized immigrants are for the Democrats; only 25 percent are for the Republicans, Competition from immigrants costs American workers $450 billion a year, The Founders wanted to admit only immigrants who would make a net contribution-and assimilate, Millions...