Lying in State

Why Presidents Lie -- And Why Trump Is Worse

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By Eric Alterman

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$17.99

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$22.99 CAD

This definitive history of presidential lying reveals how our standards for truthfulness have eroded — and why Trump’s lies are especially dangerous.

If there’s one thing we know about Donald Trump, it’s that he lies. But he’s by no means the first president to do so. In Lying in State, Eric Alterman asks how we ended up with such a pathologically dishonest commander in chief, showing that, from early on, the United States has persistently expanded its power and hegemony on the basis of presidential lies. He also reveals the cumulative effect of this deception-each lie a president tells makes it more acceptable for subsequent presidents to lie-and the media’s complicity in spreading misinformation. Donald Trump, then, represents not an aberration but the culmination of an age-old trend.

Full of vivid historical examples and trenchant analysis, Lying in State is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how we arrived in this age of alternative facts.

On Sale
Aug 11, 2020
Page Count
416 pages
Publisher
Basic Books
ISBN-13
9781541616813

Eric Alterman

About the Author

Eric Alterman is a CUNY distinguished professor of English at Brooklyn College and holds a PhD in US history from Stanford University. A contributing writer to the Nation and the American Prospect, he is the author of eleven previous titles, including the New York Times bestseller What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News. He lives in New York. 

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