Top 10 books about fake news
Mendacious propaganda has a long history, in fiction from George Orwell to Philip Roth – and real-life reports by authors including Roald Dahl
We all lie. But some of us are better at it than others. Then there are people who are so good at lying that they are paid to change the minds of millions, using techniques few of us will ever understand.
It is often said that we live in an age of fake news, but this has been going on for years, and so have attempts to describe, analyse and anticipate its impact on our political lives. Books about fake news have an unsettling and dystopian undertone, and they force us to question the headlines. At the same time, the scale of the subject and the very idea of unseen forces trying to manipulate our minds gives many of these books the compulsive energy of a cold-war thriller.