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"The definitive history of presidential lying, revealing how our standards for truthfulness have eroded-and why Trump's lies are especially dangerous. If there's one thing we know about Donald Trump, it's that he lies. But he's by no means the first president to do so. In Lying in State, Eric Alterman asks how we ended up with such a pathologically dishonest commander in chief, showing that, from early on, the United States has persistently expanded its power and hegemony on the basis of presidential lies. He also reveals the cumulative effect of this deception-each lie a president tells makes it more acceptable for subsequent presidents to lie-and the media's complicity in spreading misinformation. Donald Trump, then, represents not an aberration but the culmination of an age-old trend. Full of vivid historical examples and trenchant analysis, Lying in State is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how we arrived in this age of alternative facts."--

Frontmatter --Contents --Introduction --SECTION ONE. THE BIRTH OF A NOTION --1. The Road to Lippmanndom --2. Lippmanndom --3. Post-Lippmanndom: The Rest and the Rightest --SECTION TWO. THE REAGAN PUNDITOCRACY --4. The Triumph of George Will --5. Attack of the McLaughlinites --6. All the Views Fit to Print --7. Glass Houses and Revolving Doors --8. We Are the Wild Men --9. Even the New Republic ... --SECTION THREE. CONSEQUENCES: THE BUSH AND CLINTON YEARS --10. The Man with No New Ideas --11. Operation Pundit Shield --12. Operation Pundit Storm --13. All Monica, All the Time --Conclusion --Notes --Index

Thanks to the machinations of the right, there is no dirtier word in American politics today than "liberal"--yet public opinion polls consistently show that the majority of Americans hold liberal views on everything from health care to foreign policy. In this feisty, accessible primer, journalist and scholar Alterman sets out to restore liberalism to its rightful honored place in our political life as the politics of America's everyday citizens. In a crisply argued though extensively documented counterattack on right-wing spin and misinformation, Alterman briskly disposes of such canards as "Liberals Hate God" and "Liberals Are Soft on Terrorism," reclaiming liberalism from the false definitions foisted upon it by the right and repeated everywhere else. This book brings clarity and perspective to what has often been a one-sided debate for nothing less than the heart and soul of America.--From publisher description

Has there ever been anyone quite like Christopher Hitchens? As a writer and a thinker, Hitchens may be the greatest performance artist the profession has ever produced. He is Oscar Wilde without the plays; Gore Vidal without the novels; Edmund Wilson without the ideas; George Orwell without the integrity; and Richard Burton without the movies (and Elizabeth Taylor). What he is not, however, is the author of lasting works of either reportage, criticism, philosophy, or, dare I say it, literature. Despite his myriad (and on occasion, damnnear miraculous) talents as literary critic, columnist, and long-form journalist, Hitchens's genius undoubtedly lies in the art of the argument. "The world I live in is one where I have five quarrels a day, each with someone who really takes me on over something; and if I can't get into an argument, I go looking for one, to make sure I trust my own arguments, to hone them," he has explained, adding, "I would often rather have an argument or a quarrel than be bored, and because I hate to lose an argument, I am often willing to protract one for its own sake rather than concede even a small point."