Book cover of Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture

Book description

Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet-where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them-has contributed to the rampant spread of "intellectual arrogance."…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Know-It-All Society as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I found incredibly compelling the argument of how important humility and the willingness to admit what we don’t know are to democratic, liberal thought.

That we have become a society that rarely listens to ideas that challenge our own or that disrupt what we think we know to be true–is hugely dangerous. 

As Lynch explores, more information has not led to greater certainty or confidence in the answers we find. What we are experiencing is not only a crisis of truth, but one of trust.

From Virginia's list on combating post-truth contagions.

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A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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