Cover of Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It

Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It

Low-level dishonesty is rife everywhere, in the form of exaggeration, selective use of facts, economy with the truth, careful drafting - from Trump and the Brexit debate to companies that tell us 'your call is important to us'. How did we get to a place where bullshit is not just rife but apparently so effective that it's become the communications strategy of our times? This brilliantly insightful book steps inside the panoply of deception employed in all walks of life and assesses how it has come to this. It sets out the surprising logic which explains why bullshit is both pervasive and persistent. Why are company annual reports often nonsense? Why should you not trust estate agents? And above all, why has political campaigning become the art of stretching the truth? Drawing on behavioural science, economics, psychology and of course his knowledge of the media, Evan ends by providing readers with a tool-kit to handle the kinds of deceptions we encounter every day, and charts a route through the muddy waters of the post-truth age.

Audience
adult

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Post-Truth: Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle against Corporate Media Shares media, politics
  2. Killing the Messenger: Clintonland, Kochville, and the Battle for 2016 Shares politics, media
  3. The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy Shares politics, media
  4. Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media Shares media, politics

“If you want more of the same (politics about media), start with these.”

  1. Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment
  2. Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy
  3. The Media Monopoly
  4. The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion--Our Social Skin

“If it was the media that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Revolution Will Not Be Televised, The
  2. Republic.com 2.0
  3. Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back
  4. The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Calling Bullshit
  2. The Diary of a CEO
  3. All the President's Spin: George W. Bush, the Media, and the Truth
  4. Social media