What do you think?
Rate this book
BIG LIES: from Socrates to Social Media
A KIRKUS' SELECTION FOR BEST TEEN & YA NONFICTION 2022
NAMED ONE OF KIRKUS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2022 PW HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2022 In his new book for young readers Mark Kurlansky’s lens is the art of the “big lie,” a term coined by Adolf Hitler. Kurlansky has written Big From Socrates to social media for the next stewards of our world. It is not only a history-of, but a how-to manual for seeing through Big Lies and thinking critically.
Big lies are told by governments, politicians, and corporations to avoid responsibility, cast blame on the innocent, win elections, disguise intent, create chaos, and gain power and wealth. Big lies are as old as civilization. They corrupt public understanding and discourse, turn science upside down, and reinvent history. They prevent humanity from addressing critical challenges. They perpetuate injustices. They destabilize the world. The modern age has provided ever-more-effective ways of spreading lies, but it has also given us the scientific method, which is the most effective tool for finding what is true. In the book’s final chapter, Kurlansky reveals ways to deconstruct an allegation. A scientific theory has to be testable, and so does an allegation.
BIG LIES soars across alighting on the “noble lies” of Socrates and Plato; Nero blaming Christians for the burning of Rome; the great injustices of the Middle Ages; the big lies of Stalin and Hitler and their terrible consequences; the reckless lies of contemporary demagogues, which are amplified through social media; lies against women and Jews are two examples in the long history of “othering” the vulnerable for personal gain; up to the equal-opportunity spotlight in America.
“Belief is a choice,” Kurlansky writes, “and honesty begins in each of us. A lack of caring what is true or false is the undoing of democracy. The alternative to truth is a corrupt state in which the loudest voices and most seductive lies confer power and wealth on grifters and oligarchs. We cannot achieve a healthy planet for all the world’s people if we do not keep asking what is true.” 60 illustrations
NAMED ONE OF KIRKUS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2022 PW HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2022 In his new book for young readers Mark Kurlansky’s lens is the art of the “big lie,” a term coined by Adolf Hitler. Kurlansky has written Big From Socrates to social media for the next stewards of our world. It is not only a history-of, but a how-to manual for seeing through Big Lies and thinking critically.
Big lies are told by governments, politicians, and corporations to avoid responsibility, cast blame on the innocent, win elections, disguise intent, create chaos, and gain power and wealth. Big lies are as old as civilization. They corrupt public understanding and discourse, turn science upside down, and reinvent history. They prevent humanity from addressing critical challenges. They perpetuate injustices. They destabilize the world. The modern age has provided ever-more-effective ways of spreading lies, but it has also given us the scientific method, which is the most effective tool for finding what is true. In the book’s final chapter, Kurlansky reveals ways to deconstruct an allegation. A scientific theory has to be testable, and so does an allegation.
BIG LIES soars across alighting on the “noble lies” of Socrates and Plato; Nero blaming Christians for the burning of Rome; the great injustices of the Middle Ages; the big lies of Stalin and Hitler and their terrible consequences; the reckless lies of contemporary demagogues, which are amplified through social media; lies against women and Jews are two examples in the long history of “othering” the vulnerable for personal gain; up to the equal-opportunity spotlight in America.
“Belief is a choice,” Kurlansky writes, “and honesty begins in each of us. A lack of caring what is true or false is the undoing of democracy. The alternative to truth is a corrupt state in which the loudest voices and most seductive lies confer power and wealth on grifters and oligarchs. We cannot achieve a healthy planet for all the world’s people if we do not keep asking what is true.” 60 illustrations
320 pages, Hardcover
Published October 4, 2022
21 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
Mark Kurlansky
69 books1,993 followersMark Kurlansky is an American journalist and author who has written a number of books of fiction and nonfiction. His 1997 book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (1997), was an international bestseller and was translated into more than fifteen languages. His book Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea (2006) was the nonfiction winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
October 31, 2022
Big Lies: From Socrates to Social Media is a book that should be read by conspiracy theorists, including people who believe Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him. Sadly, it will not be. As Mark Kurlansky aptly proves, if there’s one thing conspiracy theorists DON’T want, it’s to be disabused of notions that fit nicely with their own political agendas.
Thus, this book is more likely to be read by people who DON’T believe in conspiracies and who know a lie when they see it (or, if they don’t know initially, do the hard work necessary to find out).
Kurlansky’s chief targets here are big ones. He dips into both history and current events to tackle “big players,” including entire governments, movements, politicians, dictators, etc. The chapters break down like so: “Masked Revelers in a Carnival of Lies,” “The Enlightenment and the Unenlightened,” “Denial: The Short Way Around Science,” “Favorite Lies About Women,” “A Snowball in France: The Blame Game,” “Soviet Mathematics: 2 + 2= 5,” “The Truth about American Truth,” “Big Dictators and Big Lies,” “Photographic Lies,” “Saving Children: A Best-Loved Lie,” and “The Golden Lasso of Truth.”
Equally appealing, for readers who want to dive back in, is the Index. Here he breaks it down with these helpful categories (along with pages where you’ll find examples): “Defense against Lies,” “Motives for Lying,” “Sources of Support for Lies,” “Tactics of Liars,” “Targets of Lies,” “Tools of Liars,” and “Types of Lies.” Kurlansky also provides sources for all his material (putting his money where his mouth is).
Most interesting to me were all the roots and how deep they go into history. Sure, I knew about anti-semiticism, which goes way, WAY back, and, like racism, seems impossible to eliminate. But I never knew how much the Enlightenment set conservatives off. That movement, based as it was on science, facts, and knowledge, as well as democracy and the natural rights of man, immediately hit some powers-that-be’s the wrong way. And they’re STILL working against the Enlightenment today.
Worried about the fate of democracy in the U.S. and, indeed, the world over? Feel like it’s deja vu with a front-row view of the 1930s in your news sources? You can thank forces of the Unenlightened, who are still doing their damnedest to undermine liberal thought today. And yes, by doing so, the 'Unenlightened' are automatically at odds with the Founding Fathers, who were Enlightenment poster boys if ever there were any. After all, as was the case with Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, believers in science, education, and democracy are nothing but out of touch ‘elites’ who read too many books and thus shouldn’t be trusted.
This book's mention of "elites" really hit home when I saw a headline in today's New York Times. It reads: "Putin Rails Against 'Western Elites' in Speech Aimed at U.S. Conservatives." (And how depressing is THAT?)
As for the Children’s chapter, in it Kurlansky goes after Q-Anon, showing how lies centering around children have been used throughout history, chiefly as a weapon against Jews.
Perhaps the best I can do in giving you an idea about this book is to offer some quotes from it, so I’ll finish with that and try to make it a representative mix, though of course that will be impossible.
“Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and all the great modern liars acknowledge that the important trick is to be lowbrow. Goebbels said that ‘the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.’”
“Talk radio simply spews one person’s opinions nonstop, without challenge. The opinions may be racist, sexist, and absurd lies, but it makes no difference, for there is no one to challenge. Callers are selected and can be ridiculed or cut off. The most successful of these new hosts, Rush Limbaugh, spewed hate and lies until his death in February 2021. Talk radio was primarily local before Limbaugh, but in 1988 he found a spot on WABC-AM and soon had five million listeners.”
“For all their changing initials, Russian secret police retain the same approaches and techniques and the same view of the power of lies. The more untruths the government can plant, the more confusion and chaos it can spread. Russian Communists invented the word ‘disinformation,’ setting up a special agency for its spread in 1923. Stalin started using the word after World War II. During the Cold War, the KGB produced thousands of fake organizations and fake dissidents, false stories, and conspiracy theories to sow discord in the West. One of the most famous, thoroughly exposed and debunked but still alive in social media, is that the US military spread AIDS.”
“Researchers found 400,000 bots on Twitter in the 2016 election run-up, two-thirds of which were pro-Trump. Russian bots retweeted pro-Trump fake stories thousands of times. They also retweeted Trump tweets 469,537 times (that we know of). It is unclear what effect this had on Trump winning the election. He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and won the electoral college by gaining tiny margins in a few states.”
“It would be a classic lie to claim that Russians are the fundamental source of lies in the US. There is no shortage of homegrown all-American liars.”
“Bannon became a top Trump advisor in 2016. Trump, by his own admission, doesn’t read, but Bannon does. With Bannon as an advisor, Trump followed many of the standard protocols of dictators of the past, people Trump probably knew little about. ‘Make America Great Again’ is a classic fascist statement. Hitler referred to Germany’s mythic greatness, and Mussolini referred to the Romans. Creating confusion by flooding the airwaves with lies is a standard totalitarian approach, as is arguing both sides of something. Trump pursued the lie that Obama was not born in the US, then repudiated it, then backed it some more.”
“Creating distrust of the electoral system is yet another standard totalitarian tactic. Trump warned that the 2016 election would be fraudulent, and then, when he won, he still claimed he had been cheated out of winning the popular vote. He made the same warning in 2020, and after he lost, he claimed he had won ‘by a landslide’ and the election had been stolen. After losing some sixty court cases—almost all of which were dismissed for a complete lack of evidence, even by the three Supreme Court judges he had nominated—his claim seemed a pointless exercise. Why would he pursue sixty cases with no evidence? As always, Trump was playing to his supporters, people well versed in conspiracy lies. He built a movement of people, including some elected Republicans, who would insist that elections could not be trusted. Always the huckster, he even raised millions of dollars from supporters for his cause. It all seemed worthwhile even without winning a single case.”
“Twitter, where stories have no backup, is ideal for this. If someone wants to say—as someone did—that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK, they simply state it. Research shows that false stories spread on social media six times faster than real ones. They are just more exciting.”
(After referencing Carlos Collodi’s story of Pinnochio) “I imagine Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton giving a State of the Union address and watching their noses grow. Imagine Donald Trump, his nose expanding after each sentence until finally the beak outweighs the man. Or what would a conference between Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin look like? Which man would pitch forward first, unable to support the weight of his gigantic proboscis?”
“It is undeniable that journalists today, often from elite universities, have a pro-establishment bias. Let’s get reporting from ‘regular people’ free of that elite, insider, establishment viewpoint. Except that such contributors are also often free of the training, discipline, commitment, and ethical standards of professional journalists.”
“The big lie is that information is available on the internet quickly and easily. You have to go slowly and carefully. You might arrive at the right answer more quickly than by sifting manually through a dusty archive, but you have to put in some work. Critical thinking isn’t only about doubting; it’s also about finding out what is true.”
“In the 2015 Republican primary, journalists spent so much time and space debunking Trump’s lies that there was almost no airtime or newspaper space left to cover the policies and statements of the other sixteen candidates. Trump found that the more lies he told, the more completely he could dominate the news cycle. Perhaps special sections of newspapers and programming should be set aside for exposing lies so that the task doesn’t not consume all news coverage.”
In summation, I can only wish that more Americans, both conservative and liberal, would work harder at fighting lies big and small. Yes, it’s work, but isn’t a country worth it?
Thus, this book is more likely to be read by people who DON’T believe in conspiracies and who know a lie when they see it (or, if they don’t know initially, do the hard work necessary to find out).
Kurlansky’s chief targets here are big ones. He dips into both history and current events to tackle “big players,” including entire governments, movements, politicians, dictators, etc. The chapters break down like so: “Masked Revelers in a Carnival of Lies,” “The Enlightenment and the Unenlightened,” “Denial: The Short Way Around Science,” “Favorite Lies About Women,” “A Snowball in France: The Blame Game,” “Soviet Mathematics: 2 + 2= 5,” “The Truth about American Truth,” “Big Dictators and Big Lies,” “Photographic Lies,” “Saving Children: A Best-Loved Lie,” and “The Golden Lasso of Truth.”
Equally appealing, for readers who want to dive back in, is the Index. Here he breaks it down with these helpful categories (along with pages where you’ll find examples): “Defense against Lies,” “Motives for Lying,” “Sources of Support for Lies,” “Tactics of Liars,” “Targets of Lies,” “Tools of Liars,” and “Types of Lies.” Kurlansky also provides sources for all his material (putting his money where his mouth is).
Most interesting to me were all the roots and how deep they go into history. Sure, I knew about anti-semiticism, which goes way, WAY back, and, like racism, seems impossible to eliminate. But I never knew how much the Enlightenment set conservatives off. That movement, based as it was on science, facts, and knowledge, as well as democracy and the natural rights of man, immediately hit some powers-that-be’s the wrong way. And they’re STILL working against the Enlightenment today.
Worried about the fate of democracy in the U.S. and, indeed, the world over? Feel like it’s deja vu with a front-row view of the 1930s in your news sources? You can thank forces of the Unenlightened, who are still doing their damnedest to undermine liberal thought today. And yes, by doing so, the 'Unenlightened' are automatically at odds with the Founding Fathers, who were Enlightenment poster boys if ever there were any. After all, as was the case with Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, believers in science, education, and democracy are nothing but out of touch ‘elites’ who read too many books and thus shouldn’t be trusted.
This book's mention of "elites" really hit home when I saw a headline in today's New York Times. It reads: "Putin Rails Against 'Western Elites' in Speech Aimed at U.S. Conservatives." (And how depressing is THAT?)
As for the Children’s chapter, in it Kurlansky goes after Q-Anon, showing how lies centering around children have been used throughout history, chiefly as a weapon against Jews.
Perhaps the best I can do in giving you an idea about this book is to offer some quotes from it, so I’ll finish with that and try to make it a representative mix, though of course that will be impossible.
“Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and all the great modern liars acknowledge that the important trick is to be lowbrow. Goebbels said that ‘the rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious.’”
“Talk radio simply spews one person’s opinions nonstop, without challenge. The opinions may be racist, sexist, and absurd lies, but it makes no difference, for there is no one to challenge. Callers are selected and can be ridiculed or cut off. The most successful of these new hosts, Rush Limbaugh, spewed hate and lies until his death in February 2021. Talk radio was primarily local before Limbaugh, but in 1988 he found a spot on WABC-AM and soon had five million listeners.”
“For all their changing initials, Russian secret police retain the same approaches and techniques and the same view of the power of lies. The more untruths the government can plant, the more confusion and chaos it can spread. Russian Communists invented the word ‘disinformation,’ setting up a special agency for its spread in 1923. Stalin started using the word after World War II. During the Cold War, the KGB produced thousands of fake organizations and fake dissidents, false stories, and conspiracy theories to sow discord in the West. One of the most famous, thoroughly exposed and debunked but still alive in social media, is that the US military spread AIDS.”
“Researchers found 400,000 bots on Twitter in the 2016 election run-up, two-thirds of which were pro-Trump. Russian bots retweeted pro-Trump fake stories thousands of times. They also retweeted Trump tweets 469,537 times (that we know of). It is unclear what effect this had on Trump winning the election. He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes and won the electoral college by gaining tiny margins in a few states.”
“It would be a classic lie to claim that Russians are the fundamental source of lies in the US. There is no shortage of homegrown all-American liars.”
“Bannon became a top Trump advisor in 2016. Trump, by his own admission, doesn’t read, but Bannon does. With Bannon as an advisor, Trump followed many of the standard protocols of dictators of the past, people Trump probably knew little about. ‘Make America Great Again’ is a classic fascist statement. Hitler referred to Germany’s mythic greatness, and Mussolini referred to the Romans. Creating confusion by flooding the airwaves with lies is a standard totalitarian approach, as is arguing both sides of something. Trump pursued the lie that Obama was not born in the US, then repudiated it, then backed it some more.”
“Creating distrust of the electoral system is yet another standard totalitarian tactic. Trump warned that the 2016 election would be fraudulent, and then, when he won, he still claimed he had been cheated out of winning the popular vote. He made the same warning in 2020, and after he lost, he claimed he had won ‘by a landslide’ and the election had been stolen. After losing some sixty court cases—almost all of which were dismissed for a complete lack of evidence, even by the three Supreme Court judges he had nominated—his claim seemed a pointless exercise. Why would he pursue sixty cases with no evidence? As always, Trump was playing to his supporters, people well versed in conspiracy lies. He built a movement of people, including some elected Republicans, who would insist that elections could not be trusted. Always the huckster, he even raised millions of dollars from supporters for his cause. It all seemed worthwhile even without winning a single case.”
“Twitter, where stories have no backup, is ideal for this. If someone wants to say—as someone did—that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s father killed JFK, they simply state it. Research shows that false stories spread on social media six times faster than real ones. They are just more exciting.”
(After referencing Carlos Collodi’s story of Pinnochio) “I imagine Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton giving a State of the Union address and watching their noses grow. Imagine Donald Trump, his nose expanding after each sentence until finally the beak outweighs the man. Or what would a conference between Trump and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin look like? Which man would pitch forward first, unable to support the weight of his gigantic proboscis?”
“It is undeniable that journalists today, often from elite universities, have a pro-establishment bias. Let’s get reporting from ‘regular people’ free of that elite, insider, establishment viewpoint. Except that such contributors are also often free of the training, discipline, commitment, and ethical standards of professional journalists.”
“The big lie is that information is available on the internet quickly and easily. You have to go slowly and carefully. You might arrive at the right answer more quickly than by sifting manually through a dusty archive, but you have to put in some work. Critical thinking isn’t only about doubting; it’s also about finding out what is true.”
“In the 2015 Republican primary, journalists spent so much time and space debunking Trump’s lies that there was almost no airtime or newspaper space left to cover the policies and statements of the other sixteen candidates. Trump found that the more lies he told, the more completely he could dominate the news cycle. Perhaps special sections of newspapers and programming should be set aside for exposing lies so that the task doesn’t not consume all news coverage.”
In summation, I can only wish that more Americans, both conservative and liberal, would work harder at fighting lies big and small. Yes, it’s work, but isn’t a country worth it?
Read
September 6, 2022If you can get past the first "Entreaty," in which Kurlansky quotes Hegel, Francis Bacon, and Hannah Arendt in rapid order, you will find an extremely good high school-grade history of lies, their uses, types, and some important historical examples - the Reichstag fire, the Dreyfus Affair, etc.
Any high schooler on the Debate team or Mock Trial needs this book. If you're going to talk about false flags and straw men you should really know the history of such concepts, and Kurlansky, despite just a fuck-ton of erudite quotes from every white philosopher you can think of, makes this history readable, with lots of good sidebars with juicy stories. I would pair this with What the Fact? by Seema Yasmin, which takes a more quantitative approach in testing and categorizing information.
Any high schooler on the Debate team or Mock Trial needs this book. If you're going to talk about false flags and straw men you should really know the history of such concepts, and Kurlansky, despite just a fuck-ton of erudite quotes from every white philosopher you can think of, makes this history readable, with lots of good sidebars with juicy stories. I would pair this with What the Fact? by Seema Yasmin, which takes a more quantitative approach in testing and categorizing information.
January 21, 2023
I believe this book was written for people MUCH younger than I am, but I still enjoyed it and have now had some of our past history clarified for me.
I was disappointed that I was not able to highlight anything in this e-book. I would have been able to comment more intelligently if I had those notes to look back on.
I was disappointed that I was not able to highlight anything in this e-book. I would have been able to comment more intelligently if I had those notes to look back on.
Read
November 23, 2022This book reminds me of those cigarette ads in which tobacco companies tell you that smoking is bad for you and then it results in increased sales because the viewer is subconsciously convinced that no company that was looking out for the health of its customers would ever provide a truly harmful product.
Initially I was all in with this book, and in many ways, I am kind of impressed by it. If I were currently teaching a rhetoric class, we might even look at it, because while cautioning the reader to think critically, Kurlansky fairly expertly demonstrates really good rhetorical strategies for how to lull your audience to your way of thinking. His examinations of leaders who have effectively used well-timed lies in history is a useful exercise. His unapologetic conflation of Hitler and Linen with particularly Donald Trump, and also really with pretty much all Republican leaders who have ever held office, is revealing of his bias. As the book goes on, he basically drops the pretense that this is a study of lies through history and embraces the reality that his true thesis is that Donald Trump is just the worst and everyone who has ever found anything good in anything he's done is too dumb to know better.
Kurlansky does begin the book, however, with a caution: "I hope that you will keep asking yourself what is true as you read this book and live your life." And I hope readers will do that, because he does make some great points about the rhetorical environment in which we live and offers good advice for how to navigate it. If a reader actually follows this advice and applies it to the reading of Kurlansky's book, then it really could be a fairly excellent reading experience. And he does come to the conclusion that individuals have to be responsible for becoming critical thinkers in order for a democracy to thrive. On that much we certainly agree.
Initially I was all in with this book, and in many ways, I am kind of impressed by it. If I were currently teaching a rhetoric class, we might even look at it, because while cautioning the reader to think critically, Kurlansky fairly expertly demonstrates really good rhetorical strategies for how to lull your audience to your way of thinking. His examinations of leaders who have effectively used well-timed lies in history is a useful exercise. His unapologetic conflation of Hitler and Linen with particularly Donald Trump, and also really with pretty much all Republican leaders who have ever held office, is revealing of his bias. As the book goes on, he basically drops the pretense that this is a study of lies through history and embraces the reality that his true thesis is that Donald Trump is just the worst and everyone who has ever found anything good in anything he's done is too dumb to know better.
Kurlansky does begin the book, however, with a caution: "I hope that you will keep asking yourself what is true as you read this book and live your life." And I hope readers will do that, because he does make some great points about the rhetorical environment in which we live and offers good advice for how to navigate it. If a reader actually follows this advice and applies it to the reading of Kurlansky's book, then it really could be a fairly excellent reading experience. And he does come to the conclusion that individuals have to be responsible for becoming critical thinkers in order for a democracy to thrive. On that much we certainly agree.
June 30, 2022
Thank you to the publisher and Edelweiss for a review copy.
Big Lies is a nonfiction book intended to introduce the concept of "Big Lies," lies told by governments and other influential parties, to teens. While the book did have an obvious political bent, tending to call out more Republicans and right-wing parties, it encourages readers to think for themselves.
Throughout the narrative, I found myself fact-checking the book's author for some of the more outrageous stories, and I discovered other sources which collaborated them. Young adults will be able to use this book not only as a historical document for past lies but as a tool for noting suspicious stories in the present and future.
Big Lies is a nonfiction book intended to introduce the concept of "Big Lies," lies told by governments and other influential parties, to teens. While the book did have an obvious political bent, tending to call out more Republicans and right-wing parties, it encourages readers to think for themselves.
Throughout the narrative, I found myself fact-checking the book's author for some of the more outrageous stories, and I discovered other sources which collaborated them. Young adults will be able to use this book not only as a historical document for past lies but as a tool for noting suspicious stories in the present and future.
July 24, 2022
A straight forward book that demands that kids/teens to think about what they read and hear. This is greatly needed in a world where everyone has an platform and an opinion, many of the loudest opinions are based on lies.
The more you hear a lie repeated the more likely you are to velieve it. Young people need new tools and teaching to make opinions based on truth.
The more you hear a lie repeated the more likely you are to velieve it. Young people need new tools and teaching to make opinions based on truth.
November 10, 2022
A history of how pervasive lies are and how they're used to manipulate. Very readable and appropriate for a middle school audience. Required: the chapter late in the book about assessing information.
September 22, 2022
An Anti-Defamation League audit noted that “antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in the United States in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to ADL (the Anti-Defamation League).” (To see the report, click here.) That makes two recent books important reading for those interested in learning about antisemitism: “Looking for an Enemy: 8 Essays on Antisemitism” edited by Jo Glanville (W. W. Norton and Company) for adults and “Big Lies: From Socrates to Social Media” by Mark Kurlansky and illustrated by Eric Zelz (Tilbury House Publishers), which is aimed at those aged 13-18.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/past...
July 25, 2022
Very engaging look at some of the “big lies” of the past and present. Kurlansky begins with a look at what exactly is a lie and how the notion of lies has been interpreted throughout time. Text features, interesting illustrations and graphics, along with some well-drawn comics make this a very readable and extremely interesting read. Granted, there are some pointed political jabs, but honestly it didn’t detract from the reading experience at all.
December 31, 2022
Kurlansky tackles media literacy for young people covering fake news and the impact social media has on spreading falsehoods. He covers everything from the Salem witch trials to the Dreyfus Affair to Donald Trump. He pokes fun at vaccine and climate change deniers in end-of-chapter comics and his message to young people is to question everything.
December 5, 2022
I'm surprised that reviewers haven't focused on the creative formatting of Kurlansky's hardcover edition. Young people will appreciate the funny cover, graphic novel inserts, creative page layouts, double-spacing, hand-printing. and graphics that enhance the content.
September 7, 2023
This was informative and I can see teens liking this. I do feel like they didn’t talk about women enough
November 12, 2022
Who knew that the term "fake news" has been in use since the late 1800s? Mark Kurlansky, the author of such titles as Frozen in Time, The Story of Salt, and Battle Fatigue, that's who. Using his impressive research skills, lots of information to bolster his claims, and a smidgen of frustration, Kurlansky shows us how lies have stretched across history and culminated in a president who, according the the Washington Post Fact Checking Team, told over 30,000 lies during his four year tenure in office. This book is clearly aimed at readers who have serious doubts about right wing media, so people who think that reports about Q Anon are credible will probably not enjoy this book as much as I did.
Modern "fake news" makes an appearance later in the book, but the bulk of this tome centers on disinformation and its spread in the past. And there's a LOT of it. From the ancient Greeks, to how people reacted to science during the Enlightenment to the "killer clown" fears of 2016, dozens of notable disinformation campaigns are dissected and used to illustrate the various ways that information can be skewed and used to further personal and political agendas.
This isn't arranged chronologically, but rather thematically. There are chapters on why people don't believe science, on how lies are frequently spread about women and he disenfranchised, on how lies can be constructed to lay blame, and even on how photographs have been used for lies for as long as they have been around! These chapters are interspersed with amusing cartoons about Russian spies creating disinformation bots, which are a nice break, since there is a lot of information to be digested.
Good Points
Russia is covered quite a bit, and I learned a lot about Stalin that makes understanding current politics concerning that country easier to understand. There's also a good examination of witch hunts through time, and Orwell's 1984 crops up quite often.
There are so many different topics that I wanted to investigate, just to make sure that Kurlansky had his sources straight; after all, he discusses Wikipedia, and how it can be a good place to start research, even though information found there should be checked further. This is something I tell my students; even though Wikipedia itself doesn't set out to lie, since anyone can edit information, it's good to double check with other sources. This would be a great book to use in a class about current events or global issues, because students would find it very easy to find a topic that they would like to investigate further.
There's a lengthy list of sources, as well as an index. THe index is only two pages long, but is organized not in a strictly alphabetical way, but in categories: e.g. Defense Against Lies, Motives for Lying, Tactics of Liars, etc. Since I would use this book to look for coverage of specific historical events, this wasn't as helpful. For example, I wanted to revisit the information about Truman and the atomic bombs after World War II, but wasn't able to just look up "Truman". A future edition of this helpful book would be improved if an alphabetical index were included.
I know there must be other books about media literacy, but this was definitely one of a kind in its historical scope! Most of the other books I've seen are aimed at teachers and librarians who are constructing media literacy lessons, but this is an engaging book that will appeal to readers who love history and are trying to place their own lives within its framework. This would make a thought provoking family or classroom read, and lead to a LOT of fact checking!
Modern "fake news" makes an appearance later in the book, but the bulk of this tome centers on disinformation and its spread in the past. And there's a LOT of it. From the ancient Greeks, to how people reacted to science during the Enlightenment to the "killer clown" fears of 2016, dozens of notable disinformation campaigns are dissected and used to illustrate the various ways that information can be skewed and used to further personal and political agendas.
This isn't arranged chronologically, but rather thematically. There are chapters on why people don't believe science, on how lies are frequently spread about women and he disenfranchised, on how lies can be constructed to lay blame, and even on how photographs have been used for lies for as long as they have been around! These chapters are interspersed with amusing cartoons about Russian spies creating disinformation bots, which are a nice break, since there is a lot of information to be digested.
Good Points
Russia is covered quite a bit, and I learned a lot about Stalin that makes understanding current politics concerning that country easier to understand. There's also a good examination of witch hunts through time, and Orwell's 1984 crops up quite often.
There are so many different topics that I wanted to investigate, just to make sure that Kurlansky had his sources straight; after all, he discusses Wikipedia, and how it can be a good place to start research, even though information found there should be checked further. This is something I tell my students; even though Wikipedia itself doesn't set out to lie, since anyone can edit information, it's good to double check with other sources. This would be a great book to use in a class about current events or global issues, because students would find it very easy to find a topic that they would like to investigate further.
There's a lengthy list of sources, as well as an index. THe index is only two pages long, but is organized not in a strictly alphabetical way, but in categories: e.g. Defense Against Lies, Motives for Lying, Tactics of Liars, etc. Since I would use this book to look for coverage of specific historical events, this wasn't as helpful. For example, I wanted to revisit the information about Truman and the atomic bombs after World War II, but wasn't able to just look up "Truman". A future edition of this helpful book would be improved if an alphabetical index were included.
I know there must be other books about media literacy, but this was definitely one of a kind in its historical scope! Most of the other books I've seen are aimed at teachers and librarians who are constructing media literacy lessons, but this is an engaging book that will appeal to readers who love history and are trying to place their own lives within its framework. This would make a thought provoking family or classroom read, and lead to a LOT of fact checking!
May 7, 2023
This is the book which the Durham County main branch YA librarian speedily located for me me when I asked for a book on critical thinking. I like it for many reasons. It is very well laid out, emphasizing main points in large attractive pictures, and it cites the sources for all its information. This last should not have to be said, but since the book does not shy away from deprecating stupidity staying away from undocumented opinion is a good writing strategy. Periodically the book presents conundrums (like getting the shot for the Covid) in comic book form, mimicking facebook, and leaving the reader to arrive at their own conclusions.
But my very favorite conspiracy is the Lizard menace, presented by David Icke in a 1998 book "The Biggest Secret" which I may have to order. He thinks Madonna, and Bush, and Rumsfeld, and Obama and many others are shape-shifting lizards. Moreover Public Policy Polling (which Kurlansky doesn't vouch for, maybe it has a D rating) finds that 4% of US citizens believe in lizard people. Kurlansky gives many examples of the deep state. Well, I suppose '98 is too early, and anyway Icke's books are too expensive for me, but he has written an unholy number of them, and some, tragically, have been translated into Spanish.
But my very favorite conspiracy is the Lizard menace, presented by David Icke in a 1998 book "The Biggest Secret" which I may have to order. He thinks Madonna, and Bush, and Rumsfeld, and Obama and many others are shape-shifting lizards. Moreover Public Policy Polling (which Kurlansky doesn't vouch for, maybe it has a D rating) finds that 4% of US citizens believe in lizard people. Kurlansky gives many examples of the deep state. Well, I suppose '98 is too early, and anyway Icke's books are too expensive for me, but he has written an unholy number of them, and some, tragically, have been translated into Spanish.
June 25, 2024
I started reading this book due to Socrates being in the title. However, there is no mention of Socrates anywhere in the book except the front cover. The book should have been called instead "Big Lies: from Donald Trump to other conservatives." This author is extremely biased. He seems to hate conservatives with Donald Trump taking the lead. He constantly calls Donald Trump a liar all through out the book, over 3 dozen times.
For the rest of the book where he does not reference Donald Trump, he says that we should question everything because everybody lies. However, he also says that the average American is uneducated and should not be given the privilege to question anything because they are dumb. They should keep quiet and accept the liberal elites propaganda as truth. Elites to him being people with an advance education.
Other than that, I have not come across a lot of stories he mentions in this book, even though he calls them popular lies. They seem interesting at first, but seeing how biased this author is, they might be just lies made up by the author to sell more copies of this book. He does mention in the book that people are motivated with greed when lying, I guess he truthfully described himself.
For the rest of the book where he does not reference Donald Trump, he says that we should question everything because everybody lies. However, he also says that the average American is uneducated and should not be given the privilege to question anything because they are dumb. They should keep quiet and accept the liberal elites propaganda as truth. Elites to him being people with an advance education.
Other than that, I have not come across a lot of stories he mentions in this book, even though he calls them popular lies. They seem interesting at first, but seeing how biased this author is, they might be just lies made up by the author to sell more copies of this book. He does mention in the book that people are motivated with greed when lying, I guess he truthfully described himself.
October 13, 2022
Chock full of information about "big lies", the stories are one on top of the other without a lot of breathing room for the intended teen audience. As an adult, it's a lot to take in. For a teen, it's likely easier to read this in sections. Not only are there constant quotes pulled and blown up, there are plenty of interrupting text boxes and stories to compliment or foil the main story being told chapter by chapter about how telling lies is nothing new. Governments and groups have been doing it since the dawn of time.
I'm indifferent to the presentation of the information. It's got organization and structure, but it's also chaotic within that structure. But the information recapped just goes to show that we always must be on guard as consumers of information. I especially commend the inclusion of photography lies.
I'm indifferent to the presentation of the information. It's got organization and structure, but it's also chaotic within that structure. But the information recapped just goes to show that we always must be on guard as consumers of information. I especially commend the inclusion of photography lies.
November 28, 2022
"There is nothing new under the sun." Since the beginning of time, man has attempted to gain an advantage by bending the truth just a little, some more than others. This book recalls many of those lies made by known leaders. He especially is "left-leaning" in that Donald Trump gets more print than he deserves.
Most readers will have knowledge of most of the examples given since the lies have been previously exposed. The truth will be revealed, but as the author discusses, the damage has been done or the intended consequence has been accomplished.
Nothing new in this reading.
Most readers will have knowledge of most of the examples given since the lies have been previously exposed. The truth will be revealed, but as the author discusses, the damage has been done or the intended consequence has been accomplished.
Nothing new in this reading.
January 13, 2023
2.5
I found this to be full of fascinating facts within the history of fake news and propaganda, but the format drove me bonkers. The pull quotes interrupted the flow of chapters, and the comics would have worked better as one complete story instead of as chapter enders. The chapter on photographic lies doesn’t include most of the photos mentioned!
Books this size are usually chock-full of pictures and infographics and this has some, but when you open it up to show it to a teen it’s mostly acres of text on the page which is going to make a lot of teens say “No thanks”.
I found this to be full of fascinating facts within the history of fake news and propaganda, but the format drove me bonkers. The pull quotes interrupted the flow of chapters, and the comics would have worked better as one complete story instead of as chapter enders. The chapter on photographic lies doesn’t include most of the photos mentioned!
Books this size are usually chock-full of pictures and infographics and this has some, but when you open it up to show it to a teen it’s mostly acres of text on the page which is going to make a lot of teens say “No thanks”.
March 17, 2024
To be honest, I stopped about a third of the way through, but I thought many of the people Kurlansky chose might have chosen to misrepresent themselves, and I still cannot tell why. I was having difficulty with the medium, since I was not reading the hardcover but the ebook version, and I have a visual perception difficulty.
Maybe when I find the actual HC version as opposed to the EB it may be easier.
Maybe when I find the actual HC version as opposed to the EB it may be easier.
May 31, 2025
This was a very interesting book. Mark Kurlansky investigated several lies from Ancient Greece to today. The internet and social media have exponentially increased the number of lies floating around lives.
This not a book for easily suggestively people. At the conclusion of the book, I am worried about the future of the United States and people in general around the world.
This not a book for easily suggestively people. At the conclusion of the book, I am worried about the future of the United States and people in general around the world.
May 7, 2025
Another excellent book from Marl Kurlansky.
A great compilation of information about lies that have been told my people, politicians, companies, governments, media and many other sources during the past six or seven hundred years.
His examples are great.
Very much worth reading.
A great compilation of information about lies that have been told my people, politicians, companies, governments, media and many other sources during the past six or seven hundred years.
His examples are great.
Very much worth reading.
December 4, 2022
Review to follow in School Library Connections journal.
March 3, 2023
wasn't sure where he was coming from...or where he was going
April 19, 2023
So many important lessons in here!
August 20, 2023
a must read for conspiracy theorist
July 8, 2024
Big Lies: From Socrates to Social Media should be a required HS book the same way Animal Farm was to me in me 7th grade. This book needs to be read by conspiracy theorists, including people who believe Trump’s “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from him. Sadly, it will not be. As Mark Kurlansky aptly proves, if there’s one thing conspiracy theorists DON’T want, it’s to be disabused of notions that fit nicely with their own political agendas.
Thus, this book is more likely to be read by people who DON’T believe in conspiracies and who know a lie when they see it (or, if they don’t know initially, do the hard work necessary to find out).
Joez notes to himself. Page 35 prop aimed, 36 demon, 60 top, 85, 182 bottom, 84 middle, 217, Trump Doesn't Read ~ his own words.
Thus, this book is more likely to be read by people who DON’T believe in conspiracies and who know a lie when they see it (or, if they don’t know initially, do the hard work necessary to find out).
Joez notes to himself. Page 35 prop aimed, 36 demon, 60 top, 85, 182 bottom, 84 middle, 217, Trump Doesn't Read ~ his own words.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews