The best books on propaganda

Students of all ages are surrounded by contemporary propaganda – and it now takes many forms as social media delivers highly customized, nonstop streams of entertainment, information, and persuasion. But educators can help students cope with the different kinds of propaganda – both beneficial and harmful – that can be found in news, advertising, movies, political campaigns, activism, and even education. This book offers a cornucopia of instructional strategies that help students analyze, resist, critique – and create propaganda. In the interplay of influence, propaganda is a strategic tool that shapes public opinion by using the power of language and images to appeal to the deepest hopes, fears, and dreams of people around the world. 

Until recently, propaganda was a top-down, elite-only system of communication control used largely by state actors. I argue that social media has democratized today’s propaganda, allowing nearly anyone to launch a fairly sophisticated, computationally enhanced influence campaign. I show how social media, with its anonymity and capacity for automation, allows a wide variety of groups to build the illusion of popularity through computational tools and human-driven efforts. They use these technologies and strategies to create a bandwagon effect by bringing the content into parallel discussions with other legitimate users, or to mold discontent for political purposes.

I present an extensive view of the evolution of computational propaganda, offer a glimpse into the future, and suggest pragmatic responses for policymakers, academics, technologists, and others. 

In 1940, with German U-boats blockading all commerce across the Atlantic Ocean, a fireball at the Crown Cork and Seal factory lit the sky over Baltimore. The newspapers said that you could see its glow as far north as Philadelphia and as far south as Annapolis. Rumors of Nazi sabotage led to an FBI investigation and pulled an entire industry into the machinery of national security as America stood on the brink of war.

In Cork Wars, David A. Taylor traces this fascinating story through the lives of three men and their families, who were all drawn into this dangerous intersection of enterprise and espionage. At the heart of this tale is self-made mogul Charles McManus, son of Irish immigrants, who grew up on Baltimore's rough streets. McManus ran Crown Cork and Seal, a company that manufactured everything from bottle caps to oil-tight gaskets for fighter planes. Frank DiCara, as a young teenager growing up in Highlandtown, watched from his bedroom window as the fire blazed at the factory. Just a few years later, under pressure to support his family after the death of his father, DiCara quit school and got a job at Crown. Meanwhile, Melchor Marsa, Catalan by birth, managed Crown Cork and Seal's plants in Spain and Portugal--and was perfectly placed to be recruited as a spy.

Students of all ages are surrounded by contemporary propaganda – and it now takes many forms as social media delivers highly customized, nonstop streams of entertainment, information, and persuasion. But educators can help students cope with the different kinds of propaganda – both beneficial and harmful – that can be found in news, advertising, movies, political campaigns, activism, and even education. This book offers a cornucopia of instructional strategies that help students analyze, resist, critique – and create propaganda. In the interplay of influence, propaganda is a strategic tool that shapes public opinion by using the power of language and images to appeal to the deepest hopes, fears, and dreams of people around the world. 

Paper Hearts is a novel in verse based on the true story of a group of young women who were prisoners in Auschwitz—forced to work in a munitions factory. Zlatka decided to make a birthday card for her friend Fania. She stole and bartered for paper and scissors, secretly creating an origami heart. Then she passed it to every girl at the work tables to sign with their hopes and wishes for happiness, for love, and most of all—for freedom. Fania treasured the heart—a symbol of the bond that helped them to hope for the best in the face of the worst. She kept it hidden, through the bitter days in the camp and through the death marches. She kept it always.

Teddy Gunnarson kept his war secrets hidden from his family, but terminal cancer convinces him to reveal them. To help his troubled family heal, he makes a video to be played after his death, charging his wife to reveal her secrets, as well.

As the family watches Teddy’s confessions, they discover his mission to rescue his older brother from a POW camp behind German lines. They learn that Teddy suffered terror, treason, and dishonor for the sake of a brother who had betrayed Teddy and the family and disgraced his pilot’s wings. Teddy’s War not only describes the raw horrors of war, it examines the cost of family loyalty—lengths that a man will go to demonstrate how to love a family.

“Fascism” is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political discourse, but the Roman roots of the term today seem largely forgotten. In antiquity, the ‘fasces’ were a bundle of wooden rods bound with a leather cord, in which an axe was placed—in essence, a mobile kit for corporal or capital punishment. Attendants typically carried the fasces to induce feelings of respect and fear for the relevant authority.

Starting in the Renaissance, we find revivals and reinterpretations of the ancient fasces, accelerating especially after 1789, the first year of the US Constitution and the opening volley of the French Revolution. But it was Benito Mussolini, who propagated the fasces on an unprecedented scale. The fact that the emblem has grown largely unfamiliar has offered an opening to contemporary extremist groups.

First Login is a love letter to the LitRPG genre that embraces and subverts tropes in equal measure.

Eager for adventure, Corbin jumps into Chronicle, a simulated world where magic, monsters, and mysteries abound. For the first time in his life, he’s free to go anywhere and do anything, but not everyone who plays Chronicle has Corbin’s best intentions in mind. Even the system-generated NPCs seem to have it out for him. After stumbling upon a secret so incredible that it threatens to change everything, Corbin has to figure out how to keep it for his sake and for the sake of his friends.

“Fascism” is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political discourse, but the Roman roots of the term today seem largely forgotten. In antiquity, the ‘fasces’ were a bundle of wooden rods bound with a leather cord, in which an axe was placed—in essence, a mobile kit for corporal or capital punishment. Attendants typically carried the fasces to induce feelings of respect and fear for the relevant authority.

Starting in the Renaissance, we find revivals and reinterpretations of the ancient fasces, accelerating especially after 1789, the first year of the US Constitution and the opening volley of the French Revolution. But it was Benito Mussolini, who propagated the fasces on an unprecedented scale. The fact that the emblem has grown largely unfamiliar has offered an opening to contemporary extremist groups.

“Fascism” is a word ubiquitous in our contemporary political discourse, but the Roman roots of the term today seem largely forgotten. In antiquity, the ‘fasces’ were a bundle of wooden rods bound with a leather cord, in which an axe was placed—in essence, a mobile kit for corporal or capital punishment. Attendants typically carried the fasces to induce feelings of respect and fear for the relevant authority.

Starting in the Renaissance, we find revivals and reinterpretations of the ancient fasces, accelerating especially after 1789, the first year of the US Constitution and the opening volley of the French Revolution. But it was Benito Mussolini, who propagated the fasces on an unprecedented scale. The fact that the emblem has grown largely unfamiliar has offered an opening to contemporary extremist groups.