A review by arthuraugustyn
This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev

3.0

Difficult to give this a rating. Much of the information about internet-age propaganda is fascinating and invaluable to anyone interested in how our modern world is being dominated by vicious amoral actors. At the same time, a lot of this book has long stretches of totally irrelevant "color." You'll get 10 pages about a Faulkner novel, another 10 pages on some family story from 50 years ago. They're all tangential to the book's topic, but nowhere near as interesting. Given this book is relatively short (barely 200 pages), I imagine this was mandated by the publisher for length, but it's not necessary. I started to skip huge portions whenever it was obvious there was some pointless anecdote.

Additionally, this may be the only book I put down for a year because it was so god damn depressing. That may be an indication it's a worthy read.