A brilliantly inspired study of the power of propaganda to influence geopolitical narratives.
A striking account of a German-speaking Australian working for the British secret service during the era of Nazi aggression.
Pomerantsev, a disinformation expert, is the author of Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda. In his latest book, he introduces us to Sefton Delmer (1904-1979), an Australian born in Berlin whose anti-Nazi radio programs in dozens of languages across Europe helped undermine the Nazi war effort. Growing up in Germany’s Weimar Republic (his father was a professor of English literature in Berlin) and often mocked for his British ways, young Delmer desperately wanted to fit in. After a stint in Britain, he returned to Berlin—now on the cusp of Nazi control—as a journalist for the Daily Express, where he witnessed and understood viscerally the power of political propaganda to promote belonging. Hence, in advising the British—who at first did not trust him, as he had interviewed Goebbels, Hitler, and others—Delmer could convey the psychological power of the Nazi message. It wasn’t enough, he argued, to simply “defend democracy,” a slogan that failed to resonate strongly; you had to “appeal to the groups vulnerable to the propaganda that plays into the desire to submit to strongmen.” Delmer became the head of Special Operations for the Political Warfare Executive, returned to journalism, and published his memoirs in the 1960s, but they have been largely forgotten or discounted. Historians continue to debate the extent to which anti-Nazi propaganda helped win the war. Delmer believed that it aided in the “corrosion” of German will, and the author demonstrates how crucial Delmer’s work was then—and still is, as Pomerantsev has advised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his efforts to counter Russian propaganda and aggression.
A brilliantly inspired study of the power of propaganda to influence geopolitical narratives.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781541774728
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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