Subtitled: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America
(Beacon Press, March 2025, 200pp, including 25pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index)
Pakman is a podcaster and YouTuber with frequent posts on Facebook, which is where I started following him. See The David Pakman Show. This is his first book, from early last year. He has another book, just out, called PAY ATTENTION.
Much in this book is familiar, especially the history of the right as a reaction against the era of civil rights and the resistance to science and expertise as the increasing regulatory environment against big business. Passing through critical thinking, and leading to the modern era of social media and media bubbles. It’s a good summary, familiar from Richardson and others, and more current, since Pakman is on the air every day reacting to current events, and this book is less than two years old. What’s new here include his basic defense of the left, given the progress in recent centuries, and discusses how countries that are social democracies (not socialist) are among the most prosperous in the world.
