A review by dllh
The Death of Truth by Michiko Kakutani

4.0

I sometimes see on Facebook little memes or links to things about how the U.S. is heading pretty assertively down the same sort of road that Germany did heading into the middle of the last century. I haven't quite written it off as hyperbole, but I've also not given it a whole lot of credence because, you know, it's the internet. Kakutani in this book offers some compelling evidence that we may indeed be on that track, and she writes about some of what has led us there even before Trump took the political stage. She writes some about the culture wars and about postmodernism and its use -- in particular its tendency toward a sort of relativism or -- to sort of perversely try to prop up right-wing positions, for example the proposal that we should teach junk science alongside science because they're merely different perspectives and both deserve to be heard.

The book is not comprehensive, but it is certainly terrifying. It's a quick read that I found useful. Kakutani is certainly partisan and makes no real bones about it, so if you seek something that feels like it gives equal consideration to the Trump viewpoint, this is not the book for you.