This is a well written analysis which is a must read for anyone interested in politics, wanting to gather as wide a perspective on how the current western political landscape has come about.

The author, who is a well-known journalist, raises the idea that the victor shapes history and fully analyses it. He condiders the impact of social media and globalisation, meaning that David is no longer defeating Goliath with a stone - he has no idea who or what his enemy is. The world is at war against opinions and ideals which are intangible.

There is now a veritable cannon arising from the election of 'Trump, Brexit and the new political landscape'. I would urge the reader to accept that although authors try to be impartial it is just too hard as parts of society are shocked at the version of truth being used by the ‘leaders’ we trust to keep us safe and represent our democratic values.

This is a thoroughly researched paper littered with references that anyone studying at university would be well-advised to consider reading for themselves.

It's certainly one that I will recommend to any 16+ who I know as a 'must read' to ensure they understand how to interpret the rapidly changing political landscape of the world around them.

Much as with new technologies most of us will not have the knowledge, experience or skills to guide them effectively whilst learning ourselves about how our world is not what we thought it was.

I received a free copy from net galley.com for my fair and honest review.

Our own post-truth era is what happens when society relaxes its defence of values that underpin cohesion, namely veracity, honesty and accountability.

I'm old enough or perhaps naive enough to believe that when making a decision about political voting, you should be able to rely absolutely on what the candidate tells you. I've been suspicious for a decade or more, but it's become difficult to ignore the change in political attitudes since Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. With regard to the latter, when Trump was challenged on a statement he'd made which was subsequently found to be incorrect, his response was Who cares if I got it wrong? He was able to tap into the fading concept of 'the American Dream' - those Americans who were used to waiting patiently in line and who had found themselves overtaken by women, immigrants and public sector workers.

Emotion, rather than fact or logic, appealed to the tribal instincts of a particular type of voter. Distrust was central to Vote Leave's appeal coupled with an unwillingness to accept traditional sources of information. A classic example of this, cited in the book, is Michael Gove's famous comment that Britain has had enough of experts. D'Ancona says that we could be forgiven for thinking that the propaganda which we were used to seeing in Soviet Russia has now migrated to the West.

According to d'Ancona digital technology has been the principal driver of post truth. He cites the example of Cambridge Analytica (who specialise in data analysis) and who, on their database hold details of 220 million American voters and can produce psychometric profiles of each person based on their Facebook pages.

D'Ancona believes that all is not yet lost: he insists that truth will out, courage, persistence and collaborative spirit will be rewarded, but it is necessary that remedies are found. For example, Google and Facebook must acknowledge their responsibilities (and they are taking some steps in that direction already), but it is essential that we teach children how to select and discriminate from the digital torrent that they are faced with. Legislators have a responsibility too in that the law has not kept pace with technological change.

It's a slim book and a reasonably quick and easy read. I worried that it might have been rushed out in advance of the June 2017 General Election and that whilst it might be of interest at that point, it would not have enduring relevance afterwards. It is particularly relevant at the time of publication, but the points d'Ancona makes about the need for vigilance and a critical attitude to what we are told are, in fact, timeless.

As we find ourselves knee-deep in the troubling reality of the post truth era d’Ancona’s book clearly and concisely relates how we came from the rationalism of the Enlightenment to our present parlous state of affairs.
He explains how Trump and Brexit have brought the phenomenon into focus but that they are the symptoms not the cause.

He shows how, as with so many disasters, it started with good intention, the attempt to include minorities and alternative points of view. How in attempting to achieve equality for all people we have let our decision-making processes develope in to a situation where all opinions are equal, conspiracy theorists are accorded the same standing as educated professionals, and emotions reign supreme while fact is despised and treated with derision.

d’Ancona lays out clearly why in this new reality fact-based arguments are dismissed and why arguments based on science, fact and rationalism are so ineffectual a response.
In this new emotion-based reality it doesn’t matter that what you say is demonstrably true if people feel it is not!

This book left me wondering how we can possibly frame our arguments to be more effectual while staying faithful to rationalist ideas.
Just as importantly, it convinced me that our first responsibility is to train ourselves to analyses faulty reasoning both in ourselves and in others.

Clear, concise, thought-provoking, relevant. Well worth your time.

This started out as a really informative book, and I enjoyed the writing and the topic. However, i did get the sense that this book had been padded out, as the actual meat of the book could be contained within an extended Time article. It was okay, but dragged on for too long.

Loved this book. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but I really enjoyed the chatty style of the writing - it feels more like a conversation with someone than reading. The information in it is relevant, important, revealing and interesting and delivered in a way that doesn't make you feel patronized. It's an important book for our age and everyone should read it.

I find it hard to review this book as, while it starts strong, it loses focus in the latter half. Post-Truth is a term that is used often to describe the lack of importance in facts, verification and the truth of statements made by the media and, particular, politicians. As Michael Gove said, the public is fed up of experts (i.e. people who know what they are on about!) and don't care for the truth, relying on gut feeling even when the evidence contradicts it. The book does a good job of describing the current state of affairs, and the reasons why politicans can make patently untrue claims and even when challenged seemingly suffer no consequences. But where the book lost me was in its optimism for the future, which seemed unearnt.

A brilliant book for out times and required reading for everyone today. A highly readable piece of cultural criticism.

Enjoyed reading this book, but really don't enjoy the fact that I have to agree with his points. No longer does truth and facts have a place in society and business. It has become a situation where someone's emotions and feelings now rule, not facts and the truth. The perception they create in their head.

Unfortunately, I saw the effects of truthiness in the workplace. It use to be everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything.. Even if the facts don't even come close to backing up their statements. Yep...I heard that perception comment all the time in corporate America, and it made me sick with the lack of thought behind their statements.

In a perfect word, this book would never have been written... But the world at the minute is definitely not perfect so Matthew d'Ancona has done us a great service by shining a light into the putrid corners of our society. I could fill a whole review with thought provoking quotes but suffice to say, the whole book is thought provoking. The author looks at media, at cultural norms, at human behaviour and sadly reflects to us how far we have fallen.

"It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case any more. Facts matter not at all."

Why are we not all shocked by that? Yes many are, but not all. We have a White House comfortable with "Alternative facts" and are driving through a Brexit based on lies and manipulation. Facebook shows us what we want to see and reinforces our prejudices - on all sides.

"...propaganda can therefore be tailored not only to demographic groups but also to individual voters: the cumulative ambition is to shift the popular mood without recourse to the clunkier tools of old fashioned propaganda."

We don't see that we are being manipulated, as we aren't sophisticated enough to recognise it. This is more subtle than the brutal headlines on the front page of a tabloid newspaper. We need to educate ourselves and our children about what TRUTH means and expect it from our public figures.

"In the long decay of public discourse that has finally brought us to the Post-Truth era, the political class and the electorate have conspired in the cheapening and enfeebling of what they say to one another."

This is an excellent and very readable book which looks honestly at what our society has become. There are some suggestions on how we can reclaim truth and improve our relationship with our culture but it will take dedication.

I'd recommend this for any young person stuck on their tablet or mobile phone and any one interested in why we have become a society that believes that facts don't matter - and how insidious that is.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

'Why quiet resignation is not an option and how we can and must fight back.' We live in changing and worrying times. Do we believe anything we hear, who can we trust? This author encouraged me to think and question.

D'Ancona's mission in this short volume to explore "the declining value of truth as society's reserve currency, and the infectious spread of pernicious relativism disguised as legitimate scepticism". Although much of his commentary is about the political scene (Trump, Brexit), he also examines the growth of scepticism in the scientific sphere via the MMR vaccine issue & climate change debate.

I have to say I found the book rather disappointing and at times almost hysterical. Political spin, false news, etc have been with us for centuries. Indeed the phrase 'false news' has been around for over a century. Are we living in a Post-Truth world? I am not so sure. Political lying is not new - Swift wrote about it in the early eighteenth century, and politicians of all persuasions have been merrily spinning issues for years: we only have to think of wartime propaganda, Richard Nixon & Tony Blair's dodgy dossier that took us into a war where hundreds of thousands were left dead or injured. In a political campaign, in the words of Johnny Mercer, "You've got to accentuate the positive, Eliminate the negative, Latch on to the affirmative, Don't mess with Mister In-Between" so both sides will 'spin' the issues, not just one. The political pundits have been astonished by results they didn't expect either in the UK or in the US. Perhaps an assertion of a new political scene based on 'post-truth' - is as much a defence mechanism on their part, an excuse for getting it so wrong. Nor am I convinced that everyone is sanguine about the 'truth' of what they read online, whether it be political commentary & spin or the veracity of reviews on Amazon or Tripadvisor.

D'Ancona mentions the infamous Brexiteer slogan '£350m for the NHS'. The claim that £350m would come back to the NHS if we left the EU may not have been literally true (and it isn't clear how many Bexiteers believed it to be literally true as opposed to campaign spin) but the slogan did speak to an issue that was relevant to the public i.e. do we really benefit from membership of the EU, are we getting value for money, could we use those funds in other (better) ways and are there downsides to EU membership. Did the public examine the details rationally? The answer is probably yes and no - what is rational for one person is irrational for another. The views of the population in Spalding, which has experienced a large influx of EU migrants from eastern Europe in a pretty short time-frame are, unsurprisingly, different from the views of the views of those of journalists living in the Metropolis. My truth & reality is different to yours, not just because of confirmation bias but because of different experiences: indeed, two propositions can be true even if they appear to opposed to each other depending on where you are standing. Immigration may be seen as a good thing if it means unfilled job vacancies are taken up by immigrants but the other side of the coin may be increased rents in an area as more people (immigrants or otherwise) move there or larger class sizes in schools.

The rise of social media has certainly changed the communication process and allows misinformation/disinformation to spread more rapidly and without a reality fact check. On the other hand it provides more channels to refute lies & spin. There is clearly a concern that people are getting more and more of their news from peer-to-peer groups rather than legitimate news sources featuring properly researched stories, so there is a challenge for the media, and indeed for the rest of us, to counter the rubbish and d'Ancona issus this call to arms. However, I believe Trump's casual lies will eventually lead to his own downfall. Some of his claims, such as the dispute about how many people attended his inauguration, have already been held up to public ridicule.

D'Ancona's arguments relating to climate change denial and the mistrust of the medical community as evidenced by the MMR vaccination debate are stronger. He illustrates his argument here with some striking examples of celebrity-led idiocy. We have also seen in the last few weeks the terribly sad Charlie Gard situation and the crowds of howling morons labouring under the entirely fatuous impression that the staff of Great Ormond Street hospital are in the habit of murdering babies or letting them die untreated. Having said that, the Charlies Army campaign did experience a backlash against their false accusations & belligerent tone. Perhaps part of the problem with climate science is that there have been few charismatic climatologists to get the message across and the greatest doubters are in the US where a comparative lack of awareness of the rest of the world, where the effects of climate change are more easily seen, means that the realities can be ignored in a country long-used to, and with an almost pathological sense of entitlement to, cheap fuel. I am not so sure that this demonstrates a Post-Truth society as vested interests spinning for all they are worth, just as the tobacco lobby sought to cover up the side effects of smoking for years, and with consumers wanting to believe that they can carry on (how else to explain why educated people still smoke?).

One thing I find odd is that d'Ancona blames the baby boomer generation for the appearance of post-truth, seeing in them any easy emotional response where the realities come second. I don't think I agree here - in my experience it is the younger generations, particularly those born in the nineties & noughties, who are most susceptible to being manipulated, whilst older generations are more sceptical and cynical - I can't count the number of times i have heard the phrase 'student politics' in recent months vis-a-vis the Corbynistas! However, I may be looking at this through the prism of a just-about baby boomer!

Overall, I think d'Ancona overstates his case, although perhaps he did this knowingly, to send a warning.

I received a review copy via NetGalley.

This is a concise yet comprehensive look at the origins of the Post-Truth era. It's fascinating (and slightly disheartening) to read, but the author makes a clear, sustained and accessible argument throughout.

Post-Truth by Matthew d'Ancona is both timely and thought provoking.

In recent months we have been bombarded with allegations of "Fake News", "the politics of fear", "alternative facts" and wherever you sit on the political spectrum at the very least some economy in truthfulness (although nearly always from those that you already disagree with).

This is a short tour through the genesis of the phenomena that d'Ancona describes as Post-Truth written in an easily readable academic style. Starting in 2016 it follows both the Trump campaign in the US election and the Leave campaign in the UK's EU referendum and explores how emotion and identity have replaced truth in political discourse in both countries. d'Ancona highlights the collapse of trust in experts and facts and the way that social media has magnified the impact of misinformation, conspiracy theories and ultimately Fake News.

Post-Truth is a disturbing read, the reader is left shocked at the speed with which our discussion of events has been polluted by lies and misinformation in the last 2 years. Of course the bubble effect means that most who read this book will already agree with it while those who the reader might think 'ought' to read it will dismiss it as a crazy liberal conspiracy theory - that may be an indication of the long journey we face to get back to a norm of debate based on fact.

I've decided not to review this online. It isn't fair as I couldn't finish. I found the book style to be quite hard going and ended up having to re-read sections. Thanks for the opportunity but its not for me.

An interesting and thought-provoking read, featuring the fall of evidence-based fact used in policy-making and the rise of Trump and Brexit, also tackling holocaust, vaccine and climate change deniers. Much is made of how science and fact-checking now take a back seat to emotional rhetoric and the fleeting vagaries of social media dressed up as news, and the emergence of a culture which does not seem to care if they are fed lies, as long as they are sufficiently entertained.

I thought the analysis of the current situation was strong but the 'how to fight back' part was weaker - relying on the critical thinking, analysis and fact-checking skills of the reader / voter. We're all doomed.

An interesting take on the Post-Truth world we all increasingly share. Matthew Ancona's message is very clear. As citizens, we need to take responsibility and question what is put out there by global media and politicians. Ultimately control lies with the common man - the challenge is to stimulate this audience to take action.

Book supplied by Netgalley for an honest review.

Trump, for all his faults, is gold dust for the entertainment industry. He’s petrol on the flames of satire, and the butt of countless books and articles that discuss every aspect of his erratic behaviour, from his handshake, to his wife’s every flinch, and the subject of this book, the fact that his supporters don’t care that he and his cohorts blatantly lie at every opportunity.

The preface of Matthew D’Ancona’s Post-Truth sets the tone, patiently explaining the issues, then demanding a call to arms: “Are you content for the central values of the Enlightenment, of free societies and of democratic discourse, to be trashed by charlatans – or not? Are you on the pitch, or content to stay on the terrace?”

Post-Truth is more than simple populism, it’s the bending of facts then the repeated denial of wrongdoing. It’s no coincidence that sales of George Orwell’s 1984 leapt after Trump’s inauguration. And those who believe Post-Truth will end when he leaves office are, as D’Ancona said, “confusing the leaves of the weed with its roots”.

Post-Truth can be traced from the end World War Two, through the rise (and decline) of post-modernism’s cynicism, the invention of the internet, to the modern phenomenon of click-bait. This is an interesting read, expertly researched and impressively written. A must read.

Before reading Matthew d’Ancona’s book, I’d been relatively unconcerned about the fake news phenomenon. I’d seen it as the industrial-level return of an earlier age, when partisan gossip mongers ran candidates’ campaigns. Perhaps the post-war standards of broadcast even-handedness supplied to the millions by BBC News and ITN were an aberration, and fake news purveyors the historic norm. Even during that time we had scandal, corruption and lies. So my view was that while dishonesty had triumphed both in the UK and USA in 2016, fake news was only part of the problem, and there were other structural difficulties with our democracy that also needed attention.

I’m not sure whether d’Ancona’s tract has convinced me that truth is the only, or even the first, place to defend, but I have placed a metaphorical garrison to at least guard the keep. Post Truth links Trump’s re-casting of politics as entertainment and sets out the implication for wider political engagement. D’Ancona argues that news fakery challenges a rational paradigm that stretches back to the Enlightenment and I can’t accept that our search for facts can be so brittle.

Nor am I a buyer for the idea that truth is what arises from arguments in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ – a concept that d’Ancona attributes to Oliver Wendell Holmes. Sure, let ideas battle it out and let’s have great debates, but let’s never pretend that an argument, which can gain popular acceptance on fashion, whim or better marketing, can secure a truthfulness from that acceptance. Otherwise, the earth would once have been flat, and would have become round only when enough people were prepared to believe it. The question of whether the UK should leave the EU is now believed to be settled, but while the Leave camp may well have deployed their ammunition better than the Remain side, it is not widely believed that truth was in their arsenal.

One reason that I’m less concerned than d’Ancona is that I’m less agitated about the spread of postmodernism. D’Ancona identifies that postmodernity has worked its way alongside other societal changes to lead to the emergence of voices that would simply not have been heard say 50 years ago. I think I am more relaxed than he is about the harm that relativism may cause, and in any case I am hopeful that these wider voices will lead to different perspectives and thus the greater scrutiny that d’Ancona rightly calls for.

The last of d’Ancona’s rallying cries has me nodding especially happily. He points out just how easy it is for us all to become passive consumers who construct our identity with little critical thought but instead using dodgy sources to bolster lazily-held opinions. Let’s take back civic responsibility, he almost says, and while it’s less pithy than ‘take back control’ it does have a ring of reality about it.

I think that this notion is especially appealing for me after the general election we’ve just had, and the different claims about who won and what it means for Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit. Within the Labour party in particular there is the risk of stifling a much-needed debate about what the election really means and what the party might have to do both in the immediate future and the medium term. D’Ancona reminds us that if we as citizens are to win, then we need to critique, argue, scrutinise and question. It sounds like a good place to start.

Matthew D’Ancona’s Post-Truth is a brilliant assessment of our world today. He analyses the concept of post-truth and the circumstances through which it came to dominate – arguing that Trump is a symptom of post-truth not a cause of it. He looks at how post-truth affects our society today in the form of fake news, conspiracy theories, and the devaluation of science and truth. He explains how people can be presented with incontrovertible proof that something is untrue but the conspiracy theories they have allied themselves with allow them to force causation and meaning onto an event – this is more comforting to them than the cold facts that leave them fearing a world where bad things just happen. If they can find someone or something (the government, big pharma) to blame then they feel more secure. He helps makes sense of the phenomenon so that we can arm ourselves against it.

This is quite a chilling read but it is fascinating and hugely relevant. It does offer up some hope too. The subhead of the book is very important - ‘The war on truth and how to fight back’ – because D’Ancona gives guidance for how ordinary people can resist and fight back against this situation. He aims to provide us with the tools to fight back – encouraging the reader to be their own fact checker, to check whether a story comes from a legitimate source, to use fact-checking websites. Well worth a read.

“Post-Truth” is what's going on when you make up your mind by instinct and not by using your brain. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as shorthand for “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Matthew D'Ancona analyses what that definition means for everyday politics, and singles out a handful of issues where he asks what happens when lies crop up and nobody bothers about them ?– When, to quote Nietzsche, “there are no facts, only interpretations”. As examples, he quotes the Trump campaign in America and the Brexit campaign here, but he also looks back to the MMR vaccination-versus-autism debate, Holocaust denial, and the controversies over “death panels” and Barack Obama's own birth certificate. In each instance, he finds “the triumph of the visceral over the rational, the deceptively simple over the honestly complex” He refers to the use of Facebook (and, I might add, the lazy use of Wikipedia), but he searches beyond the surface to what makes people embrace post-truth, and throws out lots of intriguing asides. Think of Donald Trump, he says, not as a deal-making business tycoon, but as an entertainer concerned above all with ratings. For the people born between the end of the war and the mid-1960s, he asserts, emotional sincerity is the highest virtue, higher than the pursuit of objective truth.

Behind that, D'Ancona explores the philosophical fashion of post-Modernism, which analyses a writer's use of words, “deconstructing” texts and themes to find in them the cultural or historical influences that colour the ideas. The unintended consequence of post-modernist philosophy is the devaluing of the content of a statement against its context. To those absorbing post-truth, what matters is how sincerely the speaker, writer or politician presents his claims; and if the claims back up what you already believe, then they are bound to be true. Never mind the evidence, one way or another. And if someone is foolish enough to challenge you, all you need to do is say that you're offering alternative facts. If that doesn't work, accuse your challenger of fake news.

Perhaps it's inevitable that D'Ancona's strategy for fighting post-truth is less incisive than his analysis of the problem – basically, he seems to be saying that the fight back has to be as imaginative and as emotionally resonant as the original assertions. That sounds like fighting them with their own weapons, story for story, with the risk of both sides losing sight of objective evidence-backed truth. Maybe so, but this book, along with JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy lets daylight in to some dark corners of the post-truth world.

Nigel Melville