Arcadia Public Library

Our democracy today is fraught with political campaigns, lobbyists, liberal media, and Fox News commentators, all using language to influence the way we think and reason about public issues. Even so, many of us believe that propaganda and manipulation aren't problems for us--not in the way they were for the totalitarian societies of the mid-twentieth century. In How Propaganda Works, Jason Stanley demonstrates that more attention needs to be paid....

A truly international, authoritative A-Z guide to five centuries of propaganda, in both wartime and peacetime, which covers key moments, techniques, concepts, and some of the most influential propagandists in history.

"A detailed, scholarly, easy-to-read analysis of the changing approaches to persuasion used by the wartime Voice of America (VOA) as World War II progressed. Shulman explains the problems in talking both to receptive Europeans and to questioning members of Congress. Tracing the late-war VOA strategy, she provides an overabundance of detail from archives and interviews to foster veracity, and a concentration on key individuals' actions and their reasons...

"From one of our leading experts on disinformation, this inventive biography of the rogue WWII propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer confronts hard questions about the nature of information war: what if you can't fight lies with truth? Can a propaganda war ever be won? In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies...

As relevant today as when it was first released, Faces of the enemy follows social psychologist Sam Keen as he unmasks how individuals and nations dehumanize their enemies to justify the inhumanity of war. Using archival news footage, public service announcements, and editorial cartoons, Keen unveils the same frightening pattern in conflict after conflict - World War II, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, Islamic and Christian Fundamentalism - and prefigures...

Conant tells the story of young writer Roald Dahl who is assigned by His Majesty's Government to Washington, D.C. as a diplomat to gather intelligence about America's isolationist circles. In the course of his "spying," he meets or works closely with David Ogilvy, Ian Fleming, and the great spymaster William Stephenson (aka Intrepid).

Legend has it that the triumphal march of television began in the United States in the 1950s but in reality its origins hark back much further. Nazi leaders, determined to beat Great Britain and the U.S. to be the world’s first television broadcaster, began Greater German Television in March 1935. German viewers enjoyed their TV broadcasts until September 1944, as Allied troops closed in. Making use of 285 reels of film discovered in the catacombs...

Contains 300 entries that explore literary works that deal with propaganda. The set includes a wide variety of genres and has an international scope. It explores the works of authors shaped by a variety of political, social, and economic movements, and places each work in its historical context. Each entry includes an overview of the work, historical context, primary themes and style, and critical discussion.

"Social media connected the world--and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. Now a leading researcher at MIT draws on 20 years of research to show how these trends threaten our political, economic, and emotional health in this eye-opening exploration of the dark side of technological progress. Today we have the ability, unprecedented in human history, to amplify our interactions with each other through social media. It is paramount,...