Battling the Big Lie

Battling the Big Lie
Author: Dan Pfeiffer
Publisher: Twelve
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2022-06-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538707993

“BATTLING THE BIG LIE is an important read for anyone who’s wondering how the far right traffics in lies and what we can all do to fight back.” ―PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OF YES WE (STILL) CAN! AND CO-HOST OF POD SAVE AMERICA. BATTLING THE BIG LIE explains how to combat political disinformation and dangerous lies of the right-wing propaganda machine. In BATTLING THE BIG LIE, bestselling author Dan Pfeiffer dissects how the right-wing built a massive, billionaire-funded disinformation machine powerful enough to bend reality and nearly steal the 2020 election. From the perspective of someone who has spent decades on the front lines of politics and media, Pfeiffer lays out how the right-wing media apparatus works, where it came from, and what progressives can do to fight back against disinformation. Over a period of decades, the right-wing has built a massive media apparatus that is weaponizing misinformation and spreading conspiracy theories for political purposes. ⁠This “MAGA Megaphone”⁠ that is personified by Fox News and fueled by Facebook⁠ is waging war on the very idea of objective truth—and they are winning. This disinformation campaign is how Donald Trump won in 2016, almost won in 2020, and why the United States is incapable of addressing problems from COVID-19 to climate change. Pfeiffer explains how and why the Republicans have come to depend on culture war grievances, crackpot conspiracies, and truly sinister propaganda as their primary political strategies, including: Republican efforts from Roger Ailes to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump to sow distrust while exploiting the media’s biases and the Democratic Party’s blind spots. The optimization of Facebook as the ultimate carrier of Trumpist messaging. Educating the Left to stop clutching pearls and start “fighting fire with fire.” How to fight back against the trolls spreading disinformation and hate on the Internet. A functioning democracy depends on a shared understanding of reality. America is teetering on the edge because one of the two parties in our two-party system views truth, facts, and science as their opponent. BATTLING THE BIG LIE is a call to arms for anyone and everyone who cares about truth and democracy. There are no easy answers or quick fixes, but something must be done.

Battling the Big Lie

Battling the Big Lie
Author: Dan Pfeiffer
Publisher: Twelve
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-06-06
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781538707982

From #1 New York Times bestselling author and cohost of Pod Save America--how to combat political disinformation and dangerous lies of the right-wing propaganda machine. In BATTLING THE BIG LIE, bestselling author Dan Pfeiffer dissects how the right-wing built a massive, billionaire-funded disinformation machine powerful enough to bend reality and nearly steal the 2020 election. From the perspective of someone who has spent decades on the front lines of politics and media, Pfeiffer lays out how the right-wing media apparatus works, where it came from, and what progressives can do to fight back against disinformation. Over a period of decades, the right-wing has built a massive media apparatus that is weaponizing misinformation and spreading conspiracy theories for political purposes. ⁠This "MAGA Megaphone"⁠ that is personified by Fox News and fueled by Facebook⁠ is waging war on the very idea of objective truth--and they are winning. This disinformation campaign is how Donald Trump won in 2016, almost won in 2020, and why the United States is incapable of addressing problems from COVID-19 to climate change. Pfeiffer explains how and why the Republicans have come to depend on culture war grievances, crackpot conspiracies, and truly sinister propaganda as their primary political strategies, including: Republican efforts from Roger Ailes to Steve Bannon and Donald Trump to sow distrust while exploiting the media's biases and the Democratic Party's blind spots. The optimization of Facebook as the ultimate carrier of Trumpist messaging. Educating the Left to stop clutching pearls and start "fighting fire with fire." How to fight back against the trolls spreading disinformation and hate on the Internet. A functioning democracy depends on a shared understanding of reality. America is teetering on the edge because one of the two parties in our two-party system views truth, facts, and science as their opponent. BATTLING THE BIG LIE is a call to arms for anyone and everyone who cares about truth and democracy. There are no easy answers or quick fixes, but something must be done.

Yes We (Still) Can

Yes We (Still) Can
Author: Dan Pfeiffer
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-06-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1785904310

From Barack Obama's former communications director comes a colourful account of how politics, the media, and the internet changed during the Obama presidency and how Democrats can fight back in the Trump era. The 'Decade of Obama' (2007—2017) was one of massive change that rewrote the rules of politics in ways that are only now beginning to be understood. Which is why all pundits got the 2016 presidential election wrong). Yes We (Still) Can looks at how Obama navigated the forces that allowed Trump to win the White House, becoming one of the most consequential presidents in American history, why Trump surprised everyone, and how Democrats can come out on top in the long run. Part political memoir, part blueprint for progressives in the Trump era, Yes We (Still) Can is an insider's take on the crazy politics of our time. Pfeiffer, one of Barack Obama's longest-serving advisors, reveals never-before-told stories ranging from Obama's presidential campaigns to his time in the White House, providing readers with an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at life on the front line of politics.

Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies
Author: Liane Moriarty
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 513
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0425274861

From the author of Here One Moment and The Husband’s Secret comes the #1 New York Times bestselling novel about the dangerous little lies we tell ourselves just to survive. THE INSPIRATION FOR THE AWARD-WINNING HBO® SERIES STARRING REESE WITHERSPOON, NICOLE KIDMAN, SHAILENE WOODLEY, LAURA DERN, ZOË KRAVITZ, AND MERYL STREEP—AVAILABLE TO STREAM ON MAX® A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny, biting, and passionate; she remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare but she is paying a price for the illusion of perfection. New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for a nanny. She comes with a mysterious past and a sadness beyond her years. These three women are at different crossroads, but they will all wind up in the same shocking place. Big Little Lies is a brilliant take on ex-husbands and second wives, mothers and daughters, schoolyard scandal, and the little lies that can turn lethal.

Confidence Man

Confidence Man
Author: Maggie Haberman
Publisher: Singel Uitgeverijen
Total Pages: 828
Release: 2022-10-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9029549815

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter who has defined Donald J. Trump’s presidency like no other journalist: a magnificent and disturbing reckoning that chronicles his life and its impact, from his rise in New York City to his tortured postpresidency. All of Trump’s behavior as president had echoes in what came before. In this revelatory and news-making book, Haberman brings together the events of his life into a single mesmerizing work. It is the definitive account of one of the most norms-shattering and consequential eras in American political history.

When Breath Becomes Air

When Breath Becomes Air
Author: Paul Kalanithi
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2016-01-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0812988418

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

How to Fight Presidents

How to Fight Presidents
Author: Daniel O'Brien
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 038534757X

Make no mistake: Our founding fathers were more bandanas-and-muscles than powdered-wigs-and-tea. As a prisoner of war, Andrew Jackson walked several miles barefoot across state lines while suffering from smallpox and a serious head wound received when he refused to polish the boots of the soldiers who had taken him captive. He was thirteen years old. A few decades later, he became the first popularly elected president and served the nation, pausing briefly only to beat a would-be assassin with a cane to within an inch of his life. Theodore Roosevelt had asthma, was blind in one eye, survived multiple gunshot wounds, had only one regret (that there were no wars to fight under his presidency), and was the first U.S. president to win the Medal of Honor, which he did after he died. Faced with the choice, George Washington actually preferred the sound of bullets whizzing by his head in battle over the sound of silence. And now these men—these hallowed leaders of the free world—want to kick your ass. Plenty of historians can tell you which president had the most effective economic strategies, and which president helped shape our current political parties, but can any of them tell you what to do if you encounter Chester A. Arthur in a bare-knuckled boxing fight? This book will teach you how to be better, stronger, faster, and more deadly than the most powerful (and craziest) men in history. You’re welcome.

Curtain of Lies

Curtain of Lies
Author: Melissa Feinberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0190644613

Curtain of Lies tells the story of the struggle to define the truth of Eastern Europe between 1948 and 1956. It examines how actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain tried to create knowledge about Eastern Europe, and thus helped solidify the battle lines of the Cold War.

Curtain of Lies

Curtain of Lies
Author: Melissa Feinberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-05-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 019064463X

While the Cold War governments of Eastern Europe operated within the confines of the Soviet worldview, their peoples confronted the narratives of both East and West. From the Soviet Union and its satellites, they heard of a West dominated by imperialist warmongers and of the glorious future only Communism could bring. A competing discourse emanated from the West, claiming that Eastern Europe was a totalitarian land of captive slaves, powerless in the face of Soviet aggression. In Curtain of Lies, Melissa Feinberg conducts a timely examination into the nature of truth, using the political culture of Eastern Europe during the Cold War as her foundation. Focusing on the period between 1948 and 1956, she looks at how the "truth" of Eastern Europe was delineated by actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Feinberg offers a fresh interpretation of the Cold War as a shared political environment, exploring the ways in which ordinary East Europeans interacted with these competing understandings of their homeland. She approaches this by looking at the relationship between the American-sponsored radio stations broadcast across the Iron Curtain and the East European émigrés they interviewed as sources on life under Communism. Feinberg's careful analysis reveals that these parties developed mutually reinforced assumptions about the meaning of Communism, helping to create the evidentiary foundation for totalitarian interpretations of Communist rule in Eastern Europe. In bridging the geopolitical and the individual, Curtain of Lies provides a perspective that is both innovative in its methodology and indispensable to its field.

Sigh, Gone

Sigh, Gone
Author: Phuc Tran
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-04-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250194725

For anyone who has ever felt like they don't belong, Sigh, Gone shares an irreverent, funny, and moving tale of displacement and assimilation woven together with poignant themes from beloved works of classic literature. In 1975, during the fall of Saigon, Phuc Tran immigrates to America along with his family. By sheer chance they land in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a small town where the Trans struggle to assimilate into their new life. In this coming-of-age memoir told through the themes of great books such as The Metamorphosis, The Scarlet Letter, The Iliad, and more, Tran navigates the push and pull of finding and accepting himself despite the challenges of immigration, feelings of isolation, and teenage rebellion, all while attempting to meet the rigid expectations set by his immigrant parents. Appealing to fans of coming-of-age memoirs such as Fresh Off the Boat, Running with Scissors, or tales of assimilation like Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Displaced and The Refugees, Sigh, Gone explores one man’s bewildering experiences of abuse, racism, and tragedy and reveals redemption and connection in books and punk rock. Against the hairspray-and-synthesizer backdrop of the ‘80s, he finds solace and kinship in the wisdom of classic literature, and in the subculture of punk rock, he finds affirmation and echoes of his disaffection. In his journey for self-discovery Tran ultimately finds refuge and inspiration in the art that shapes—and ultimately saves—him.