Challenge Misinformation: Books for Adults

American society is more polarized than ever before. We are strategically being pushed apart by disinformation--the deliberate spreading of lies disguised as truth--and it comes at us from all sides: opportunists on the far right, Russian misinformed social media influencers, among others. It's endangering our democracy and causing havoc in our electoral system, schools, hospitals, workplaces, and in our Capitol....McQuade shows us how to identify the ways disinformation is seeping into all facets of our society and how we can fight against it with practical solutions to strengthen the public, media, and truth-based politics.

Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center..... From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America's first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF.

Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon--the legacy of P.T. Barnum's 'humbug' culminating with the currency of Donald J. Trump's 'fake news'. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, with race being the most insidious American hoax of all....This brilliant and timely work asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of 'truthiness' where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.

Examines "how facts--shared truths--have lost their power to hold us together as a community, as a country, globally, and how belief in 'alternative facts' and conspiracy theories have destroyed trust in institutions, leaders, and legitimate experts."

We are bombarded with more information each day than our brains can process especially in election season. It's raining bad data, half-truths, and even outright lies. Daniel J. Levitin shows how to recognize misleading announcements, statistics, graphs, and written reports revealing the ways lying weasels can use them.

A Firehose of Falsehood...breaks down disinformation tactics and offers tools for defending and restoring truth. Using examples from Darius I of ancient Persia (522-486 BCE), to blood libel of the Middle Ages, to Soviet disinformation tactics and modern election deniers, Teri Kanefield and Pat Dorian show how tyrants and would-be tyrants deploy disinformation to gain power. Democracy, which draws its authority from laws instead of the whim of a tyrant, requires truth. For a democracy to survive, its citizens must preserve and defend truth. Now that the internet has turned what was once a trickle of lies into a firehose, the challenge of holding on to truth has never been greater. A firehose of falsehood offers readers these necessary tools.

We've all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don't understand what we're looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous--and easier to share than ever. While such visualizations can better inform us, they can also deceive by displaying incomplete or inaccurate data, suggesting misleading patterns-- or simply misinform us by being poorly designed, such as the confusing "eye of the storm" maps shown on TV every hurricane season. Many of us are ill equipped to interpret the visuals that politicians, journalists, advertisers, and even employers present each day, enabling bad actors to easily manipulate visuals to promote their own agendas.

From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can't fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won?....[A]s author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he's learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin's tyranny and lies.

For more than 200 years, the name "Rothschild" has been synonymous with two things: great wealth, and conspiracy theories about what they're "really doing" with it....Journalist and conspiracy theory expert Mike Rothschild, who isn't related to the family, sorts out myth from reality to find the truth about these conspiracy theories and their spreaders. Who were the Rothschilds? Who are they today? Do they really own $500 trillion and every central bank, in addition to "controlling the British money supply?" Is any of this actually true? And why, even as their wealth and influence have waned, do they continue to drive conspiracies and hoaxes?

In this debut novel, "a high-profile female journalist's world is upended when her fiancé's name turns up in a viral social media post."

In 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits. Surgeon John Howard is a rational man. His apprentice Zachary knows John is reluctant to believe anything that purports to exist outside the realm of logic. But even John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local farmer, manages to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, John realizes that nothing in his experience as a village physician has prepared him to deal with a situation as disturbing as this.

From the Pulitzer-prize winning reporters who broke the news of Harvey Weinstein's sexual harassment and abuse comes the thrilling untold story of their investigation and its consequences for the #MeToo movement.

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is your map through this maze of modern life. Here Dr. Steven Novella-along with Bob Novella, Cara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein-will explain the tenets of skeptical thinking and debunk some of the biggest scientific myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories-from anti-vaccines to homeopathy, UFO sightings to N- rays. You'll learn the difference between science and pseudoscience, essential critical thinking skills, ways to discuss conspiracy theories with that crazy co- worker of yours, and how to combat sloppy reasoning, bad arguments, and superstitious thinking.

R. Philip Bouchard takes a closer look at 13 pervasive scientific untruths tackling a range of topics from gravity and radiation to global warming, pandemics and humorously shares the real science behind them. You'll learn why trees do not store carbon dioxide, why getting your genome sequenced tells you much less than you think it does, and why a day is not actually 24 hours.

A journalist who specializes in conspiracy theories draws on interviews with QAnon converts and victims, as well as psychologists, sociologists, and academics to explain the origin and growth of the movement, its embrace by right-wing media and politicians, and why it is important to understand it rather than mock it.

Infamous social media influencer Evie Davis has spent her whole life online, since her mother shared a viral video of her at age five. When she suddenly disappears in the middle of a live stream, her older sister, Hazel, becomes determined to find Evie and the truth behind her disappearance.

When a writer named Satya attends a prestigious artist retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won't let up.... [F]or Satya, these Orwellian interruptions begin to crystalize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Satya scours his life for moments where truth bends toward the imagined, and misinformation is mistaken as fact. Sifting through the President's tweets, newspaper clippings, childhood memories from India, and moments as an immigrant, a husband, father, and teacher, A Time Outside This Time captures our feverish political moment with intelligence, beauty, and an eye for the uncanny. It is a brilliant meditation on life in a post-truth era.

Sarah's story begins as she's researching what she believes will be a book about her high school philosophy teacher, a charismatic instructor who taught her and her classmates to question everything--in the end, even the reality of historical atrocities. As she digs into the effects of his teachings, her life takes a turn into the fantastical when her wife, Marta, is notified that she's been investigated for sexual misconduct at the university where they both teach. Based in part on a viral New York Times essay, To Name the Bigger Lie follows the investigation as it upends Sarah's understanding of truth.

In Unmasking AI, Buolamwini goes beyond the news headlines about racism, colorism, and sexism in Big Tech to tell the remarkable story of how she uncovered what she calls "the coded gaze"-evidence of racial and gender bias in tech-and galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both tech industry and research sector, Buolamwini shows how race, gender, and ability bias can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity vulnerable in our AI-dependent world. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them.

Claudia is used to keeping secrets from her family. Such as the fact that she prefers girls--and that she's embarking on an unsuitable but supremely fun career. Veracity, a two-and-a-half-person detective agency that operates out of a Manhattan townhouse and verifies people's online dating personas, has recruited Claudia via an online murder mystery game. A lifelong reader of mystery novels, Claudia takes to her new job sniffing out cheaters and catfishers like a latter-day lovechild of Elizabeth Bennet and Sherlock Holmes. But when one of her very first clients turns up dead, Claudia breaks with Veracity's protocols to investigate what happened, unconvinced by the story everyone else believes.

Javier Perez....learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background--murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend [Gio] serving time for gang activity--can be a key to doors he didn't even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer. ... Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his 'unique perspective.' But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game.

This book dissects medical myths and pseudoscience and explores how misinformation can spread faster than microbes. Yasmin debunks public health myths ranging from the spurious link between vaccines and autism to the truth about so-called chemtrails left behind by airplanes. In short chapters covering popular myths, Yasmin parses the science behind fearful rumors and models how to be a more informed consumer of health news.

A compelling nonfiction graphic novel, Whistleblowers is the true story of four courageous individuals who risked their careers--or their lives--to confront the unfolding Holocaust. Who were the whistleblowers? Alan Cranston--a young journalist and future U.S. senator who exposed the truth of Hitler's plans. Henry Morgenthau, Jr.--a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's cabinet who confronted the President over the plight of Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. Jan Karski--an eyewitness to Nazi atrocities who met with American and British officials to alert them about the death camps. Josiah E. DuBois Jr.--an American civil servant who blew the whistle on colleagues inside the Roosevelt administration who were blocking the rescue of refugees.

"You look like a thing and I love you" is one of the best pickup lines ever... according to an artificial intelligence trained by scientist Janelle Shane, creator of the popular blog AI Weirdness....We rely on AI every day for recommendations, for translations, and to put cat ears on our selfie videos. We also trust AI with matters of life and death, on the road and in our hospitals. But how smart is AI really... and how does it solve problems, understand humans, and even drive self-driving cars? Shane delivers the answers to every AI question you've ever asked, and some you definitely haven't.