Information Wars, Richard Stengel
Information Wars, Richard Stengel
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Information Wars
How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do about It

Author: Richard Stengel

Narrator: Christopher Grove

Unabridged: 11 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Kalorama

Published: 10/08/2019


Synopsis

During the final three years of the Obama administration, Richard Stengel, the former editor of Time magazine and an Under Secretary of State, was on the front lines of the new global information war. At the time, he was the single person in government tasked with unpacking, disproving, and combating both ISIS's messaging and Russian disinformation. Then, in 2016, as the presidential election unfolded, Stengel watched as Donald Trump used disinformation himself, weaponizing the grievances of Americans who felt overlooked. In fact, Stengel quickly came to see how all three players had used the same playbook: ISIS sought to make Islam great again; Putin tried to make Russia great again; and we all know about Trump.

In a narrative that is by turns dramatic and eye-opening, Information Wars walks listeners through this often frustrating battle. Stengel moves through Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and introduces characters from Putin to Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Mohamed bin Salman to show how disinformation is impacting our global society. He illustrates how ISIS terrorized the world using social media, and how the Russians launched a tsunami of disinformation around the annexation of Crimea—a scheme that became the model for their interference with the 2016 presidential election.

About Richard Stengel

Richard Stengel is the former editor of Time magazine. He was also an Under Secretary of State for the Obama administration. He collaborated with Nelson Mandela on his bestselling 1993 autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and later served as coproducer of the 1996 Oscar-nominated documentary Mandela. His other books include January Sun, Mandela's Way, and Information Wars.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Himanshu on November 11, 2019

Richard Stengel, as a former editor of TIME, sure knows how to put out an headline to grab attention. The title was what drew me to the book in the first place. It was definitely more appealing than the alternative, more accurate title: Richard Stengel (Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy)......more

Goodreads review by Doc on February 21, 2020

I read this book because I was interested in understanding what disinformation looks like, how it evolved, and how we can combat it. Instead I got hundreds of pages of autobiography from a very uninteresting person with no real ability at self reflection. The whole time I kept thinking, “did no one e......more

Goodreads review by Venky on December 26, 2019

Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky a Russian political scientist and a self-proclaimed “political technologist”) once famously exclaimed that to get people to vote the way you want, “you need to build a fairy tale that will be common to all of them.” Who better to assimilate this fact than Richard Stengel. Mr......more

Goodreads review by Hans on February 10, 2020

He who controls the narrative, controls the minds of the populace. Information Warfare is a battle over reality and most often facts and truth are the easiest victims. Especially pertinent for our times, critical thinking has become not just a 'nice to have' but a 'must have' to survive in the age o......more