Michiko Kakutani

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic comes an impassioned critique of the West’s retreat from reason. ‘The Death of Truth is destined to become the defining treatise of our age’ David Grann ‘The first great book of the Trump administration ... essential reading’ Rolling Stone

The Death of Truth

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic comes an impassioned critique of the West's retreat from reason. 'The Death of Truth is destined to become the defining treatise of our age' David Grann 'The first great book of the Trump administration ... essential reading' Rolling StoneWe live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted by the US President. Discredited conspiracy theories and ideologies have resurfaced, proven science is once more up for debate, and Russian propaganda floods our screens. The wisdom of the crowd has usurped research and expertise, and we are each left clinging to the beliefs that best confirm our biases. How did truth become an endangered species? This decline began decades ago, and in The Death of Truth, former New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani takes a penetrating look at the cultural forces that contributed to this gathering storm. In social media and literature, television, academia, and political campaigns, Kakutani identifies the trends - originating on both the right and the left - that have combined to elevate subjectivity over factuality, science, and common values. And she returns us to the words of the great critics of authoritarianism, writers like George Orwell and Hannah Arendt, whose work is newly and eerily relevant. With remarkable erudition and insight, Kakutani offers a provocative diagnosis of our current condition and presents a path forward for our truth-challenged times.

Daryl Houston

I sometimes see on Facebook little memes or links to things about how the U.S. is heading pretty assertively down the same sort of road that Germany did heading into the middle of the last century. I haven't quite written it off as hyperbole, but I've also not given it a whole lot of credence because, you know, it's the internet. Kakutani in this book offers some compelling evidence that we may indeed be on that track, and she writes about some of what has led us there even before Trump took the political stage. She writes some about the culture wars and about postmodernism and its use -- in particular its tendency toward a sort of relativism or -- to sort of perversely try to prop up right-wing positions, for example the proposal that we should teach junk science alongside science because they're merely different perspectives and both deserve to be heard.

The book is not comprehensive, but it is certainly terrifying. It's a quick read that I found useful. Kakutani is certainly partisan and makes no real bones about it, so if you seek something that feels like it gives equal consideration to the Trump viewpoint, this is not the book for you.

Lucas Coelho

This is the last book I am going to read in 2018 and, although it sometimes feels Michiko is preaching to the converted, an important book to read. 

This is a book worth talking about and worth sharing if we want 2019 and the next 10 years to be different or at least more truthful.

The Death of Truth

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