Praise for Information Wars:
“With the eye of a historian and the passion of a man in the arena, Richard Stengel has given us a compelling and illuminating memoir of his time at the highest levels in the fight against disinformation and for American values. Richly observed and thoughtfully rendered, Stengel’s book is essential reading.” —Jon Meacham
“Information Wars is a gripping insider account of the U.S. government’s struggle to understand and fight back against a new generation of online threats from extremist messaging and Russian disinformation. As a celebrated journalist who moved into the frontlines of this fight, Richard Stengel sheds new light on how bad actors leverage technology to undermine trust, and helps us better understand what must be done to protect our democracy.” — Madeleine K. Albright
“With colorful behind-the-scenes stories and razor-sharp insights, Stengel provides the first insider report from the front lines of the disinformation wars waged by Russia and ISIS. At the heart of the struggle was the way the internet allowed people to weaponize grievances, as Donald Trump did in his campaign. Countering this trend is the most crucial challenge for our democracy and free society. Stengel shows how we’ve failed and what we can do in the future.” —Walter Isaacson
“Information Wars ought to be a wake-up call. The message is that open, democratic societies are in retreat. There’s only one force powerful enough to save the day (one too little mentioned these days), and that’s the readers and viewers who consume information.”—David Ignatius, Washington Post
“As a Washington insider and former journalist, Stengel writes from a rare and illuminating double perspective…Stengel's recounting of the events and individuals, including Putin and Trump, involved in the surge in and fight against propaganda and misinformation is jarring yet hopeful as he concludes with a blueprint for remedy and change.” ―Booklist
“With great clarity, [Stengel] recounts the hurdles he encountered: bureaucratic procedures, acronyms and government-speak, endless vetting and turf battles, all of which slowed efforts to bring his print-oriented office into the era of social media…A revealing look at America's difficult struggle to combat false, misleading narratives” ―Kirkus Reviews
“The book introduces ways to reduce the impact of disinformation and propaganda, including real-time disclosure of who’s paying for political ads and more transparent sourcing in news reporting. Readers interested in how disinformation fits into today’s foreign affairs landscape will want to give this a look.” ―Publishers Weekly
“As Richard Stengel argues in his important book Information Wars, certain governments, such as Russia, and terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State (ISIS), engage in disinformation to create their own false and extremist narratives, which democracies, such as the United States, are proving to be ineffective at countering. Mr. Stengel is especially suited to discuss these issues.”—Washington Times
Praise for Richard Stengel and Mandela's Way:
“There is no man I admire more than Nelson Mandela. Rick Stengel’s wise and moving book captures the Nelson Mandela I have been privileged to know. But reading Mandela’s Way gave me new insights and inspiration. I am confident it will give the same gifts to others. I was inspired anew, and I know others will be too.”
—President Bill Clinton
“This delightfully inspiring book is a philosophical guide to how we can aspire to achieve Mandela’s grace and how we can draw upon his greatness as a model for the comportment of our lives each day.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University
“Nelson Mandela has lived every word of his teaching, whatever the cost. His abiding lesson is about forgiveness. Mandela’s Way takes us into the inner life of one of the most of important heroes of the century. There are lessons here that could radically change the way you live your life.”
—Deepak Chopra, author of The Ultimate Happiness Prescription
“Mandela’s Way is a timely and welcome reminder of this great man’s political genius, personal integrity, and peerless instinct for survival and triumph. Every world leader should keep Mandela’s Way within easy reach.”
—Tom Brokaw
“Here is the wisdom of the world’s greatest moral leader brilliantly distilled by a wonderful writer. From the time they spent working closely together on Mandela’s memoirs, Rick Stengel draws fifteen big life lessons plus hundreds of smaller insights, while also giving us an intimate and astonishingly honest look at this inspiring human being.”
—Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and Einstein
“Mandela’s Way is an electrically exciting, direct, and vivid way of making greatness tangible, human and complex. Richard Stengel has honed all the elegance and lucidity of thirty years of brilliant cultural and political writing into a book to illuminate, to inspire—and to endure.”
—Pico Iyer, author of The Open Road and The Lady and the Monk
2019-08-07
Former Time editor Stengel (Mandela's Way: Lessons on Life, Love, and Courage, 2010, etc.) offers a gloomy view of America's efforts in the "battle of ideas" with Russia, the Islamic State group, and other entities.
We "still don't know how to fight" disinformation, writes the author, who served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from 2013 to 2016. "The truth is, it's impossible to stop people from creating falsehoods and other people from believing them." In this refreshingly frank account, Stengel describes his stint in the byzantine State Department, where he focused on countering IS messaging and Russian disinformation in the last years of the Obama administration. With great clarity, he recounts the hurdles he encountered: bureaucratic procedures, acronyms and government-speak, endless vetting and turf battles, all of which slowed efforts to bring his print-oriented office into the era of social media. Foreign-service officers with no media experience insisted it was "easy" to create content. He was also greatly hampered by the very openness of American society, which info-savvy IS and Putin used to their advantage. Most of his book details the creation of a messaging coalition with Arab nations to thwart incessant "out-tweeting" by "digital jihadis" bent on undermining the U.S. with messages and videos on kidnappings and beheadings of Americans. "Not everyone can afford an F-35," writes Stengel, "but anyone can launch a tweet." Even so, few in government were tweeting. One exception, social media guru and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoff Pyatt, warned, "we are being out-messaged by the Russians….They don't feel the need to be truthful." Stengel relates the thinking of participants in the information war in ways that bring the dangers of this global messaging onslaught home. He notes how IS migrated to the dark web as a result of U.S. counterefforts, and he argues that artificial intelligence has great potential to detect and delete false information.
A revealing look at America's difficult struggle to combat false, misleading narratives.
