The Death of Truth
By Michiko Kakutani
Notes on Falsehood in an Age of Trump. Tim Duggan Books, 2018.
Summary of The Death of Truth book by Michiko Kakutani
A riveting account of how the shifting media landscape, explosion in online news and willful manipulation by Russia have polarized politics and made the truth unfashionable, echoing the claims of postmodernist academics and totalitarian propagandists.
Chapters in The Death of Truth book summary
What do you get from this book? The story of how truth lost its value and how politicians exploited it
America has always had its conspiracy theorists, but the rejection of reason is reaching a new pitch
Postmodernism in academia has leaked into popular culture and politics, creating the conditions for truth to be disregarded
We live in an age of unprecedented vanity, selfishness, and narcissism, enabled by right-wing politics, social media, and information overload
Reality is denied through the devaluing of language, as the 20th century totalitarians knew well
Tribalism is growing as a result of social media and algorithms, while attention spans collapse
Russia and the right have weaponized the internet, using fake news to incite racism and exhaust people’s interest in politics
Summary of the key insights
Selected critiques in brief
Final word
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The Death of Truth — Book Summary Snapshot
Who should read The Death of Truth book
- Politics buffs
- conspiracy theorists
- those worried about the future
- people interested in literature
- social media users
About the author of The Death of Truth
Michiko Kakutani
Michiko Kakutani is the former chief book critic at The New York Times, where she worked for over thirty years, and whose reviews aided the success of writers like Zadie Smith and David Foster Wallace. She is a Yale graduated, worked at The Washington Post as a reporter, and has a Pulitzer Prize in literary criticism.
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