What do you think?
Rate this book
Lies that Kill: A Citizen's Guide to Disinformation
Disinformation made possible by rapid advances in cheap, digital technology, and promoted by organized networks, thrives in the toxic political environment that exists within the United States and around the world. In Lies that Kill, two noted experts take readers inside the world of disinformation campaigns to show concerned citizens how to recognize disinformation, understand it, and protect themselves and others. Using case studies of elections, climate change, public health, race, war, and governance, Elaine Kamarck and Darrell West demonstrate in plain language how our political, social, and economic environment makes disinformation believable to large numbers of people.
Karmarck and West argue that we are not doomed to live in an apocalyptic, post-truth world but instead can take actions that are consistent with long-held free speech values. Citizen education can go a long way towards making us more discerning consumers of online materials and we can reduce disinformation risks through digital literacy programs, regulation, legislation, and negotiation with other countries.
Karmarck and West argue that we are not doomed to live in an apocalyptic, post-truth world but instead can take actions that are consistent with long-held free speech values. Citizen education can go a long way towards making us more discerning consumers of online materials and we can reduce disinformation risks through digital literacy programs, regulation, legislation, and negotiation with other countries.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published September 3, 2024
9 people are currently reading
145 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 9, 2024
A VERY timely book!
In this era of inexpensive digital technology and the proliferation of social networks of all sorts, it is not surprising that inaccurate information can go viral. Lies That Kill takes on the even more disturbing problem of “disinformation”, which is deliberately falsely spread to achieve a goal. Deliberately false information can be posted and spread easily on Facebook, Snapchat, and similar outlets. Modern tools like AI make it possible not only to write untruths but also to construct fake but convincing videos and pictures that can ruin reputations and lives. Protecting the public from such a dangerous threat is a vital need.
Lies That Kill vividly paints the situation via chapters on six important topics: election integrity, climate change, public health, race relations, wartime disinformation, and the ability to govern. I appreciated that there were many examples from outside the United States, which underscores that this is a worldwide problem. It was not too surprising that countries like Russia use disinformation to cause problems with other countries. I was somewhat disappointed to see an example of its use by the United States, but then perhaps disinformation has become or will become another tool of war, and it may be preferable to bombs. It is certainly being used as an election tool, such as the widely publicized fake video of President Biden stumbling. There are also cases cited that are more personal, like the allegation that a respected law professor had sexually harassed a student that cited a completely made-up Washington Post article or pornographic videos that substitute the face of a celebrity for the original woman. The examples cited are highly disturbing, saddening, worrisome but enlightening. It seemed that some of the examples cited, especially in areas like race relations and antisemitism, were more accurately described as misinformation, though, since they were sincerely held albeit perhaps erroneous beliefs by those who espoused them, rather than disinformation that deliberately tries to deceive.
The final chapter discusses what citizens and policymakers can do to address the problem. It includes ways to educate people on how to evaluate the information they are seeing. It explores the need to respect free speech when trying to address the disinformation problem and ways for the government, both executive and legislative, to regulate harmful behavior while respecting the right to free speech. Some specific government actions recommended include prosecuting bad actors and negotiating international agreements so that the problem can be addressed worldwide. Disinformation can draw a big audience and generate huge revenues for the sites where it is posted, and the book calls for ways to address this. These are all difficult areas, and I wish that addressing the problem had been explored in more detail and formed a bigger part of the book.
I hope Lies That Kill can help open the door for more books on how to confront this important topic.
I received an advance review copy of this book from Edelweiss and the Brookings Institution.
In this era of inexpensive digital technology and the proliferation of social networks of all sorts, it is not surprising that inaccurate information can go viral. Lies That Kill takes on the even more disturbing problem of “disinformation”, which is deliberately falsely spread to achieve a goal. Deliberately false information can be posted and spread easily on Facebook, Snapchat, and similar outlets. Modern tools like AI make it possible not only to write untruths but also to construct fake but convincing videos and pictures that can ruin reputations and lives. Protecting the public from such a dangerous threat is a vital need.
Lies That Kill vividly paints the situation via chapters on six important topics: election integrity, climate change, public health, race relations, wartime disinformation, and the ability to govern. I appreciated that there were many examples from outside the United States, which underscores that this is a worldwide problem. It was not too surprising that countries like Russia use disinformation to cause problems with other countries. I was somewhat disappointed to see an example of its use by the United States, but then perhaps disinformation has become or will become another tool of war, and it may be preferable to bombs. It is certainly being used as an election tool, such as the widely publicized fake video of President Biden stumbling. There are also cases cited that are more personal, like the allegation that a respected law professor had sexually harassed a student that cited a completely made-up Washington Post article or pornographic videos that substitute the face of a celebrity for the original woman. The examples cited are highly disturbing, saddening, worrisome but enlightening. It seemed that some of the examples cited, especially in areas like race relations and antisemitism, were more accurately described as misinformation, though, since they were sincerely held albeit perhaps erroneous beliefs by those who espoused them, rather than disinformation that deliberately tries to deceive.
The final chapter discusses what citizens and policymakers can do to address the problem. It includes ways to educate people on how to evaluate the information they are seeing. It explores the need to respect free speech when trying to address the disinformation problem and ways for the government, both executive and legislative, to regulate harmful behavior while respecting the right to free speech. Some specific government actions recommended include prosecuting bad actors and negotiating international agreements so that the problem can be addressed worldwide. Disinformation can draw a big audience and generate huge revenues for the sites where it is posted, and the book calls for ways to address this. These are all difficult areas, and I wish that addressing the problem had been explored in more detail and formed a bigger part of the book.
I hope Lies That Kill can help open the door for more books on how to confront this important topic.
I received an advance review copy of this book from Edelweiss and the Brookings Institution.
June 3, 2025
this was a good book and well documented. I did not finish, not due to lack of interest, but I was too busy with other things. the library sent me so many overdue notices, the last one was "we've charged your account for the cost of this book." so I returned it. I don't want the librarians to be mad at me.
I did find it laughable how many times the author brought up documented, disinformation from our current Secretary of Health. our country is in a tough place.
read this book to see through the lies and to help understand the coordinated methods "they" use to spread disinformation.
I did find it laughable how many times the author brought up documented, disinformation from our current Secretary of Health. our country is in a tough place.
read this book to see through the lies and to help understand the coordinated methods "they" use to spread disinformation.
November 22, 2025
(4/5) This book delves into a variety of ways that lies dominate narratives in our media ecosystem, such as the way media figures sew distrust in the sciences and universities, interference from foreign powers like Russia funding right wing media, etc. It is mostly surface level and meant to comment more on the nature of how lies are being used, who benefits from disinformation, and why lying is so useful as a tactic in modern times.
As far as the goals it sets out to accomplish go, it is interesting and satisfactory. I find myself wanting them to have gone further in breaking down propaganda as a tool in American politics going further back, and how the past that we take largely for granted led to where we are now. An example might include the way the US overthrew various foreign governments for “national security” reasons that really secured markets for American agricultural or oil corporations throughout the Cold War through to the Iraq War.
The book is surface level such that it paints a picture that everything was so normal until recently, even though the authors give plenty of brief examples in older historical periods. Social media has been revolutionary as a form of information transmission, but it is just as hijacked as the early internet was by corporations and powers looking to control populations. Lies have always been there, they’ve just had the flood gates opened for new opportunities in recent years.
It leaves itches unscratched for me, like every chapter ended having given me a sense of where we are at right now, but little in the ways of seeing past or future. It’s beyond the point of the book, so it’s hard to knock points off the value of the reading material that is there, but still a little frustrating.
Another example of the surface level aspects being annoying to me is the “both sides-ism” that is applied to certain topics just for the sake of showing how proliferating lies are in the current moment. The discussions of Israel and Palestine are particularly frustrating when the top-down mass media ecosystem that forces anti-islamic and pro-apartheid propaganda down our throats is compared to the minute instances where a Hamas rocket was mistaken for an Israeli rocket. We take decades of Israeli expansion for granted in this discussion, and the one instance of a Hamas rocket veering course and landing in a Palestinian hospital parking lot is cited but not the hundreds of times Israel actually did blow up Palestinian hospitals, etc.
It is a bit much of me to ask that the authors take sides on the issues discussed when the whole point of the book is about lies and the effects they have on society. It is also important to acknowledge that misinformation and disinformation propagates on all sides rather than just bashing right-wingers the whole time. The authors do try and in my opinion succeed in staying on topic and remaining unbiased, but the magnitudes of lies are often equivocated in this book as a result. A touch on the nuances at the end of each section might have relieved some of this tension for me without straying too far from the central message and point of it all.
Misc thoughts and personal extrapolations below:
The authors discuss a large list of lies within our modern media sphere, but don’t comment much on the contradictory nature of many of said lies. I think that recognizing this phenomenon adds a lot to what they discuss in the book:
Conspiracy theorists interchangeably throw around statements like “Covid is being used to cause depopulation” (now it is that the Covid vaccine is doing all the killing, apparently). But then media hacks like Charlie Kirk profit while spreading the myth that white people are being replaced by racial minorities via the “Great Replacement Theory”. Simultaneous government conspiracies that make no sense in combination, especially considering Covid has been well documented as harming racial minorities more than white people, who are on average less likely to have adequate healthcare. Apparently right wing media would have us believe that Covid is a government hoax made to kill people, but also white people aren’t having enough babies and are being replaced, but also Trump admin stats show that the majority of Covid deaths are not white people. All at the same time.
Here’s some examples I noticed while reading this book:
-“The 2020 election was stolen despite Trump being in charge of the executive branch and FBI.”
-“The Democrats failed (or forgot?) to steal the election again in 2024 despite having far more power this election cycle.
-“Climate change isn’t real, it’s just made up by ideologically motivated woke scientists.”
-“Yeah the climate is changing in small ways but it isn’t caused by humans so there’s nothing we need to do. My proof? This study I found that’s funded by an oil corporation.”
-“Covid is just like the flu, no big deal.”
-“Covid is an engineered bio-weapon created by the Chinese to kill Americans.”
I feel like there is a whole extra dimension to add to the book regarding the nature of lies within authoritarian frameworks. This goes far above and beyond the point of this book, but I would love to see this analyzed in greater detail.
I’ve noticed that the contradictions in many of these partisan lies fit within fascist fear-mongering tropes, notably “the enemy is strong and weak at the same time.”
To be prideful or nationalistic, the in-group has to be uplifted and presented as strong, and “enemies” or out-groups have to be weaker by comparison. Yet the enemy has to simultaneously be a compelling threat to inspire action. “Jews are a weakness to the fabric of German society and culture, but also they are controlling everything and something has to be done about this Jewish Problem.”
-“Immigrants are lazy and are stealing our tax dollars via welfare programs.”
-“Immigrants are taking all the jobs and leaving hard working Americans to starve.”
-“Blue hair liberals with all their mental illnesses are so confused and too anxious to leave their houses, and they don’t even know what a woman is.”
-“They are in control of the government, the media, universities, they’re manipulating and indoctrinating our kids, etc.”
-“Charlie Kirk was killed for his free speech because they couldn’t beat him in the marketplace of ideas.”
-“We have to ban books on trans-ideology in schools, it’s a virus of woke-ism.”
Even when it supports their beliefs, supports their action or inaction in any given moment, authoritarians paint themselves as underdogs against the strong enemy, but also the enemy is weak and we will crush them. I’ve heard these examples all year long:
-“Trump is reducing taxes and reducing the national debt at the same time and giving us a prosperous economy.”
-“We have to give $100 billion to ICE, $40 billion to Argentina, billions yearly to Israel, $850 billion to the Department of Defense in 2025, etc.”
-“Israel is home to state of the art defense systems like the Iron Dome, protected by mandatory military service, surveillance tech, its the only safe place for Jewish people on Earth.”
-“Israel is under constant threat by all of their neighbors who want to viciously kill every single Jew, and we have to blow up every school and hospital in Palestine because they are all human shield rocket launch sites with miles of underground Hamas tunnels.”
-“Those leaked Young Republican group chats with nazi jokes about gassing jews are taken out of context, we don’t want these college kids having their lives ruined over a joke.”
-“Making fun of Charlie Kirk or quoting his own podcast? You deserve to be doxxed and kicked out of college and fired from your job, sicko.”
-“Democrats are all over the Epstein files and we should release them so these powerful people can be removed from power.”
-“The Epstein files are a Democrat hoax propagated by fake news media to exaggerate Trump’s connections to Epstein.”
As far as the goals it sets out to accomplish go, it is interesting and satisfactory. I find myself wanting them to have gone further in breaking down propaganda as a tool in American politics going further back, and how the past that we take largely for granted led to where we are now. An example might include the way the US overthrew various foreign governments for “national security” reasons that really secured markets for American agricultural or oil corporations throughout the Cold War through to the Iraq War.
The book is surface level such that it paints a picture that everything was so normal until recently, even though the authors give plenty of brief examples in older historical periods. Social media has been revolutionary as a form of information transmission, but it is just as hijacked as the early internet was by corporations and powers looking to control populations. Lies have always been there, they’ve just had the flood gates opened for new opportunities in recent years.
It leaves itches unscratched for me, like every chapter ended having given me a sense of where we are at right now, but little in the ways of seeing past or future. It’s beyond the point of the book, so it’s hard to knock points off the value of the reading material that is there, but still a little frustrating.
Another example of the surface level aspects being annoying to me is the “both sides-ism” that is applied to certain topics just for the sake of showing how proliferating lies are in the current moment. The discussions of Israel and Palestine are particularly frustrating when the top-down mass media ecosystem that forces anti-islamic and pro-apartheid propaganda down our throats is compared to the minute instances where a Hamas rocket was mistaken for an Israeli rocket. We take decades of Israeli expansion for granted in this discussion, and the one instance of a Hamas rocket veering course and landing in a Palestinian hospital parking lot is cited but not the hundreds of times Israel actually did blow up Palestinian hospitals, etc.
It is a bit much of me to ask that the authors take sides on the issues discussed when the whole point of the book is about lies and the effects they have on society. It is also important to acknowledge that misinformation and disinformation propagates on all sides rather than just bashing right-wingers the whole time. The authors do try and in my opinion succeed in staying on topic and remaining unbiased, but the magnitudes of lies are often equivocated in this book as a result. A touch on the nuances at the end of each section might have relieved some of this tension for me without straying too far from the central message and point of it all.
Misc thoughts and personal extrapolations below:
The authors discuss a large list of lies within our modern media sphere, but don’t comment much on the contradictory nature of many of said lies. I think that recognizing this phenomenon adds a lot to what they discuss in the book:
Conspiracy theorists interchangeably throw around statements like “Covid is being used to cause depopulation” (now it is that the Covid vaccine is doing all the killing, apparently). But then media hacks like Charlie Kirk profit while spreading the myth that white people are being replaced by racial minorities via the “Great Replacement Theory”. Simultaneous government conspiracies that make no sense in combination, especially considering Covid has been well documented as harming racial minorities more than white people, who are on average less likely to have adequate healthcare. Apparently right wing media would have us believe that Covid is a government hoax made to kill people, but also white people aren’t having enough babies and are being replaced, but also Trump admin stats show that the majority of Covid deaths are not white people. All at the same time.
Here’s some examples I noticed while reading this book:
-“The 2020 election was stolen despite Trump being in charge of the executive branch and FBI.”
-“The Democrats failed (or forgot?) to steal the election again in 2024 despite having far more power this election cycle.
-“Climate change isn’t real, it’s just made up by ideologically motivated woke scientists.”
-“Yeah the climate is changing in small ways but it isn’t caused by humans so there’s nothing we need to do. My proof? This study I found that’s funded by an oil corporation.”
-“Covid is just like the flu, no big deal.”
-“Covid is an engineered bio-weapon created by the Chinese to kill Americans.”
I feel like there is a whole extra dimension to add to the book regarding the nature of lies within authoritarian frameworks. This goes far above and beyond the point of this book, but I would love to see this analyzed in greater detail.
I’ve noticed that the contradictions in many of these partisan lies fit within fascist fear-mongering tropes, notably “the enemy is strong and weak at the same time.”
To be prideful or nationalistic, the in-group has to be uplifted and presented as strong, and “enemies” or out-groups have to be weaker by comparison. Yet the enemy has to simultaneously be a compelling threat to inspire action. “Jews are a weakness to the fabric of German society and culture, but also they are controlling everything and something has to be done about this Jewish Problem.”
-“Immigrants are lazy and are stealing our tax dollars via welfare programs.”
-“Immigrants are taking all the jobs and leaving hard working Americans to starve.”
-“Blue hair liberals with all their mental illnesses are so confused and too anxious to leave their houses, and they don’t even know what a woman is.”
-“They are in control of the government, the media, universities, they’re manipulating and indoctrinating our kids, etc.”
-“Charlie Kirk was killed for his free speech because they couldn’t beat him in the marketplace of ideas.”
-“We have to ban books on trans-ideology in schools, it’s a virus of woke-ism.”
Even when it supports their beliefs, supports their action or inaction in any given moment, authoritarians paint themselves as underdogs against the strong enemy, but also the enemy is weak and we will crush them. I’ve heard these examples all year long:
-“Trump is reducing taxes and reducing the national debt at the same time and giving us a prosperous economy.”
-“We have to give $100 billion to ICE, $40 billion to Argentina, billions yearly to Israel, $850 billion to the Department of Defense in 2025, etc.”
-“Israel is home to state of the art defense systems like the Iron Dome, protected by mandatory military service, surveillance tech, its the only safe place for Jewish people on Earth.”
-“Israel is under constant threat by all of their neighbors who want to viciously kill every single Jew, and we have to blow up every school and hospital in Palestine because they are all human shield rocket launch sites with miles of underground Hamas tunnels.”
-“Those leaked Young Republican group chats with nazi jokes about gassing jews are taken out of context, we don’t want these college kids having their lives ruined over a joke.”
-“Making fun of Charlie Kirk or quoting his own podcast? You deserve to be doxxed and kicked out of college and fired from your job, sicko.”
-“Democrats are all over the Epstein files and we should release them so these powerful people can be removed from power.”
-“The Epstein files are a Democrat hoax propagated by fake news media to exaggerate Trump’s connections to Epstein.”
October 6, 2024
Well-written book, but not especially informative for people who have been paying attention to the topic for the past few years. The polling data presented in the book is interesting and effectively shows the way that disinformation has affected the American public. Proposed solutions presented throughout and especially in the final chapter are sensible, though it doesn't inspire much faith in meaningfully action being taken to prevent the spread of disinformation.
All in all, this is a good book for someone who knows little about how 'fake news' is disseminated. But to be frank, there are more entertaining sources presenting the same information within this book in formats that are easier to digest.
All in all, this is a good book for someone who knows little about how 'fake news' is disseminated. But to be frank, there are more entertaining sources presenting the same information within this book in formats that are easier to digest.
August 30, 2025
As other reviews have stated, this book isn’t very informative for folks who’ve been paying attention. I was hoping to learn something new, and I kept thinking, “Who doesn’t already know this stuff?”
The chapter about Wartime Disinformation was pretty biased, surprisingly. The authors have a strong pro-Israel bias and kept calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “a conflict” — except by this point, we all know it’s NOT a conflict. The authors also focused on antisemitism without noting a single instance of the Islamophobic disinformation that’s been rampant since October 7.
This book is a big disappointment. It talks about “disinformation” yet it’s grossly biased and it perpetuates disinformation! Thank goodness I only checked this out from the library instead of paying for it!
The chapter about Wartime Disinformation was pretty biased, surprisingly. The authors have a strong pro-Israel bias and kept calling Israel’s assault on Gaza “a conflict” — except by this point, we all know it’s NOT a conflict. The authors also focused on antisemitism without noting a single instance of the Islamophobic disinformation that’s been rampant since October 7.
This book is a big disappointment. It talks about “disinformation” yet it’s grossly biased and it perpetuates disinformation! Thank goodness I only checked this out from the library instead of paying for it!
December 15, 2024
The book claims to take an unbiased look at disinformation. In the beginning it mentions examples of disinformation programs from both Democrats and Republicans, but it soon becomes a tirade of Democratic left rants against their belief of Republican conservative disinformation campaigns. They disagreed with the Louisiana federal judge's ruling that the government could not contact social media sites and tell them what to sensor. Since this was mentioned at length twice, I got the feeling that this was the primary driver of the book. Because they touted left-leaning organizations like Democracy Works, Protect Democracy, and Law for Truth, it was apparent that it was not an unbiased book.
It amuses me that they critique social media sites that use inflammatory words to attract audience and then they the title the book Lies That Kill rather something like A Look Into Disinformation.
It amuses me that they critique social media sites that use inflammatory words to attract audience and then they the title the book Lies That Kill rather something like A Look Into Disinformation.
April 7, 2025
The preface will gaslight tf out of you. I was expecting some sort of high-brow but thought-provoking analysis of disinformation systems made to be consumed by a wide audience. Kind of implied, yeah?
What I got was mostly citations or quotes, words that I have never seen before, generalized retellings of historical events, and absolutely nothing provocative.
I have multiple technical licenses and am college educated. In NO WAY is this consumable for the average American who only has a 40% chance of being fully literate.
"Promulgate" or some form: 27x
"Deleterious": 2x
What I got was mostly citations or quotes, words that I have never seen before, generalized retellings of historical events, and absolutely nothing provocative.
I have multiple technical licenses and am college educated. In NO WAY is this consumable for the average American who only has a 40% chance of being fully literate.
"Promulgate" or some form: 27x
"Deleterious": 2x
January 28, 2025
Quick impressions: Overall, I really liked the book. I do recommend it for public and academic libraries. The book could also be a good selection for library schools and training librarians in information literacy.
(Full detailed review with reading notes available on my blog.)
(Full detailed review with reading notes available on my blog.)
October 11, 2024
Informative book on what’s going on in the world
November 10, 2024
Interesting read. It's a pretty dry, textbook type read on the various types of disinformation, examples of how it has damaged people and what can be done to combat it in the future.
December 25, 2024
No news to someone who is tuned in to the elections of late…
December 28, 2025
Great book with lot of citations. I don't necessarily agree with the solutions it proposes, but has a good description of the problem and prior approaches to handle it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews