Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry

Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion

Anthony Pratkanis, Elliot Aronson · 432 pages

Americans create 57% of the world's advertising while representing only 6% of its population; half of our waking hours are spent immersed in the mass media. Persuasion has always been integral to the democratic process, but increasingly, thoughtful discussion is being replaced with simplistic soundbites and manipulative messages. Drawing on the history of propaganda as well as on contemporary rese

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia

Peter Pomerantsev · 272 pages

"Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible is a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new pow

No Logo

Naomi Klein · 512 pages

"What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming of the Presidency

Joshua Green · 272 pages

The shocking elevation of Steve Bannon to head Trump's flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, hit political Washington like a thunderclap and seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist who'd never run a campaign and was despised by Democrats and Republicans alike. Yet Bannon's hard-edged ethno-nationalism and his elaborate, years-long plo

The Running Man

Stephen King · 256 pages

The runaway bestseller about the ultimate reality showThe year is 2025. The Running Man is America's favorite television game show. Ben Richards is the program's latest contestant-and the Hunters' latest target in a rigged game of death…

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies

Noam Chomsky · 422 pages

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

Eric Schlosser · 383 pages

To a degree both engrossing and alarming, the story of fast food is the story of postwar Amerca. Though created by a handful of mavericks, the fast food industry has triggered the homogenization of our society. Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled the juggernaut of American cultural imperialism ab

Airframe

Michael Crichton · 431 pages

Airframe is a novel by the American writer Michael Crichton, his eleventh under his own name and twenty-first overall, first published in 1996, in hardcover, by Knopf and then in 1997, as a paperback, by Ballantine Books. The plot follows Casey Singleton, a quality assurance vice president at the fictional aerospace manufacturer Norton Aircraft, as she investigates an in-flight accident aboard a N

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman · 412 pages

Discusses the ways in which the mass media are manipulated to present the news according to an underlying elite consenus which affects the manner in which similar events in different parts of the world are presented.

Hello Everybody!

Joris Luyendijk · 243 pages

The Loudest Voice in the Room: How Roger Ailes and Fox News Remade American Politics

Gabriel Sherman · 568 pages

An inside account of Fox News offers insight into its operations and influence, covering the original launch of the cable news network by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch and the ways in which Fox has become a dominant force in American politics.

Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel

Jean Kilbourne · 368 pages

The Powers That Be

David Halberstam · 771 pages

David Halberstam's new book is an extraordinary achievement. It chronicles the stunning rise in power and influence of America's communications empires. It opens our eyes to the domination of government by the media. It takes us behind the scenes and shows us the new shapes of power in America today. It brings us close to the men and women who developed and wielded that power, and wield it now. -

Ways of Seeing

John Berger · 166 pages

How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever."Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we e

The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories

Frank Rose · 361 pages

Wired contributing editor Frank Rose introduces readers to the people who are reshaping media for a two-way world--people like Will Wright (The Sims), James Cameron (Avatar), Damon Lindelof (Lost), and dozens of others whose ideas are changing how we play, how we chill, and even how we think.

You Are Being Lied To

Russ Kick, Russell Kick · 399 pages

Hit Makers: How Things Become Popular

Derek Thompson · 344 pages

A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power

Paul Fischer · 353 pages

"A nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, [this book] offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today"--Amazon.com.

Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

Nick Davies · 420 pages

Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood

Maureen Ryan · 348 pages

An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

Elisabeth Rosenthal · 432 pages

"An award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems. It is well documented that our healthcare system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symp

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

Tim Wu · 416 pages

"From Tim Wu, author of award-winning The Master Switch, and who coined the phrase "net neutrality"--a revelatory look at the rise of "attention harvesting," and its transformative effect on our society and our selves"--

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire

Tim Schwab · 496 pages