"When it was first released in 2013, Arnold Kling's The Three Languages of Politics was a prescient exploration of political communication, detailing the "three tribal coalitions" that make up America's political landscape. Progressives, conservatives, and libertarians, he argued, are "like tribes speaking different languages. As a result, political discussions do not lead to agreement. Instead, most political commentary serves to increase polarization."...

In this age of intense political conflict, we sense objective fact is growing less important. Experts are attacked as partisan, statistics and scientific findings are decried as propaganda, and public debate devolves into personal assaults. How did we get here, and what can we do about it? In this sweeping and provocative work, political economist William Davies draws on a four-hundred-year history of ideas to reframe our understanding of the contemporary...

"As COVID-19 spread around the world, so did government censorship. The Infodemic lays bare not just old-fashioned censorship, but also the mechanisms of a modern brand of "censorship through noise," which moves beyond traditional means of state control-such as the jailing of critics and restricting the flow of information-to open the floodgates of misinformation, overwhelming the public with lies and half-truths. Joel Simon and Robert Mahoney, who...

In What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank pointed out that a great number of Americans actually vote against their own interests. In The Political Mind, George Lakoff explains why.

"Early in his campaign, Donald Trump boasted that "I know words. I have the best words," yet despite these assurances his speech style has sown conflict even as it has powered his meteoric rise. If the Trump era feels like a political crisis to many, it is also a linguistic one. Trump has repeatedly alarmed people around the world, while exciting his fan-base with his unprecedented rhetorical style, shock-tweeting, and weaponized words. Using many...

Every week on the public radio show On the Media, the award-winning journalist Brooke Gladstone analyzes the media and how it shapes our perceptions of the world. Now, from her front-row perch on the day's events, Gladstone brings her genius for making insightful, unexpected connections to help us understand what she calls-and what so many of us can acknowledge having-"trouble with reality." Reality, as she shows us, was never what we thought it was-there...

"Being a public figure is no walk in the park - the world focuses on every move that politicians make and highlights their every mistake. "Image collapse" can befall anyone whose carefully cultivated persona is pitted against intermediaries in the broadcast booths of cable news networks or behind the photo desks of newspapers, magazines, and today's host of digital platforms. As a world-traveling "advance man," an operative who orchestrates TV- and...

Presidential Campaigns: Documents Decoded illuminates both the high stakes of a presidential campaign and the gaffes, controversies, and excesses that often influence the outcome. With a view to enabling readers to develop skills essential to political literacy, the book examines crisis points in modern presidential elections from the early 1950s through the late 2000s. Chronologically organized, the study focuses on key events pertinent to each...