A Slim book with major implications. We should all be considering the role of reason in society today, if we really want to be engaged and understand the world in which we find ourselves. This is one where you have to really savor each idea and sentence as it comes along. I found myself rereading different passages, to really take in what she was describing, observing, and arguing for. ( )

3.5 stars?

It's my own fault for continuing to read SUPER short books when I know I'll just be frustrated by how they don't delve more deeply into their topics.

I need to stop reading them. They clearly aren't for me. ( )

Saw this slender little book on the featured table at the store and just couldn't resist it. Especially as it name-checked Philip K. Dick on the flap. Gladstone is clearly my kind of people. Which is confirmed over and over again as she quotes Le Guin, and then George Lakoff. So, basically I'm pretty much exactly her core audience.

Which is a good thing, because this little tract gives little space to identify a problem, its causes, and a possible solution. Those not already on board may find these arguments unconvincing. But for me, each page was assimilated directly into my brain, no resistance.

While I would have loved more concrete suggestions in the end, those given were entirely in keeping with the more philosophical tone of this tract. Very happy to have picked it up. ( )

The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time is a short little book about where we are one year after Trump’s election and how we got here. Brooke Gladstone is a host on the radio program On the Media, and she looks at the elephant that is Trump’s election through her frame of reference, the media and how it helped elect Trump and what needs to be done to save the republic.

The critical issue she identifies is that we are all defining our own reality nowadays. Patrick Moynihan famously said, “You are entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Well, that was nice while it lasted, but in the era of FOX News, AM Radio, and Donald Trump, the idea of objective, measurable facts and reality have gone out the window into hellish postmodernism where reality is what Trump tweets–even if he changes reality twice a day.

Gladstone argues that Trump is a deliberate demagogue and she cites Arendt and many other students of authoritarianism to bolster her argument. She does not even mention the telling detail from his ex-wife that Trump kept Hitler’s “My New Order” on his bedside table the way many people keep their Bible. Accidental authoritarian, my Aunt Fanny!

The Trouble with Reality is a short, easy book with a useful reminder that it was not just Russian meddling that put Trump in the White House. People knowingly voted for an openly corrupt racist who lied to them constantly They knew he lied and liked it. Everything that should be disqualifying was a bonus because enough people just wanted to wreck everything. It’s not that Gladstone dismisses Russian hacking as immaterial, but she does not want it to distract from the homegrown threat of white nationalists and from the war on reality.

The Trouble with Reality at Workman Publishing
Brooke Gladstone on Twitter

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/12/19/9781523502387/ ( )

3.5 A few weeks back I read [book:Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History|35171984], which traced our history of gullibility far into the past. I receive The Strand non fiction book box, and this was one of the books in that box. Proved to be a complimentary read to Fantasyland, coming from a slightly different direction. Why do so many of us have trouble with reality?

A small book, with slot of big thoughts, and some relatable information. Explains how we are reluctant to let anything nor anyone interfere with our opinions or thoughts, when we are positive we are right. Explains how lies told by politicians, and he who shall remain unnamed, become our new reality. Who can we believe? Is it fake news or fact? I know I'm not the only one who wonders why this person is still allowed to tweet, when his tweets are often devastating and often cause a huge backlash. It appears his tweets may serve another diversion, this too is gone over in this book. As I said, much information is gone over in this little book. There is much more, but you should try to read this, it does provide much food for thought. ( )