Trust Me I'm Lying

'ASTONISHING' FINANCIAL TIMES

'The bestselling author and former strategist exposes the global media machine: now updated for the post-truth era

Ryan Holiday's cult classic saw the fake news era coming. When it first published it sounded the alarm about where we were headed - and now, it's even more urgent. Politically motivated stories are planted to influence elections. Fake outrage is generated to propel obscure trolls to viral sensation. News cycles are derailed and candidates destroyed by anonymous sources. None of this is real and somebody is responsible: a media manipulator.

Chronicling his time spent as a media strategist, Holiday exposes the relationship between the media and marketers: how to spot their fingerprints, how to fight them, and how (if you must) to emulate their tactics. Updated and expanded for a new era of misinformation, this 15th anniversary edition pulls back the curtain to reveal a world where the news is sold as entertainment, opinion masquerades as fact, algorithms drive everything to extremes and nobody is held accountable. The stakes couldn't be higher and it's time you understood how things really work. What you choose to do with that information is up to you.