In 1958, Shepard Stone, then directing the Ford Foundation's International Affairs program, suggested that his staff "measure" America's cultural impact in Europe. He wanted to determine whether efforts to improve opinions of American culture were yielding good returns. Taking Stone's career as a point of departure and frequent return, Volker Berghahn examines the triangular relationship between the producers of ideas and ideologies, corporate America, and Washington policymakers at a peculiar juncture of U.S. history. He also looks across the Atlantic, at the Western European intellectuals, politicians, and businessmen with whom these Americans were in frequent contact. While shattered materially and psychologically by World War II, educated Europeans did not shed their opinions about the inferiority, vulgarity, and commercialism of American culture. American elites--particularly the East Coast establishment--deeply resented this condescension. They believed that the United States had two culture wars to win: one against the Soviet Bloc as part of the larger struggle against communism and the other against deeply rooted negative views of America as a civilization. To triumph, they spent large sums of money on overt and covert activities, from tours of American orchestras to the often secret funding of European publications and intellectual congresses by the CIA.

At the center of these activities were the Ford Foundation, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, and Washington's agents of cultural diplomacy. This was a world of Ivy League academics and East Coast intellectuals, of American philanthropic organizations and their backers in big business, of U.S. government agencies and their counterparts across the Atlantic. This book uses Shepard Stone as a window to this world in which the European-American relationship was hammered out in cultural terms--an arena where many of the twentieth century's major intellectual trends and conflicts unfolded.

""Thank You, Comrade Stalin" illuminates the story of the rise and demise of official public culture in the Soviet Union. In lively and provocative prose, Jeffrey Brooks examines the Soviet press to show how Party leaders constructed a vision of national identity through their tight control over the dissemination of information. This powerful book will spark new debates about the Cold War, and will fascinate anyone who ever longed for a peek behind the 'iron curtain'."--Elaine Tyler May, University of Minnesota

"Jeffrey Brooks demonstrates in fascinating detail what the term 'logocracy'--the rule of words--meant in the Soviet Union. Concentrating on the press but also covering literature and the arts, he shows how the public culture promoted by the communist authorities from Lenin to Stalin to the exclusion of all independent thought created its own false reality. It sustained the dictatorship but in the long run also contributed to its decay and collapse. The book is an important contribution to the understanding of a regime that exerted such baleful influence on the twentieth century."--Richard Pipes, Harvard University

"Jeffrey Brooks has lifted the curtain on a great mystery: how did the makers of the official Soviet state construct their world view? Through a splendid examination of the Soviet Press, Brooks reveals that the rise of the cult of Stalin, Soviet anti-Semitism and the great 'Great Patriotic War' against Fascism provided the foundational myths of the new regime. As he details the unfolding of the Soviet view of the Cold War, no longer will it be possible for scholars to study the Cold War as only a diplomatic response to the Soviets or an internal affair focusedon anti-communist purges in the United States. Rather we have to understand the two great powers in dialogue with each other, and that political and cultural history are two sides of the same coin."--Professor Lary May, University of Minnesota

"Professor Jeffrey Brooks's "Thank You, Comrade Stalin!" is one of the very best books in any language on the Soviet Union and system."--Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, University of California, Berkeley

"Through a meticulous and exhaustive analysis of the daily Soviet Press, Brooks traces the development of the media vocabulary that provided the basic ideological ground informing relationships between the state and its citizens. The Stalin who stands at the center of this web of deceit is not first and foremost a monster nor an ideologue, but rather an omnipresent textual reality, the ultimate spinmeister."--Andrew Wachtel, Northwestern University

"The twentieth century knew other terrorist regimes, but the character and tone of Stalinist discourse was unique. Stalinist verbiage took the place of real discussions about the issues facing society, and Brooks gives us the most thorough, most intelligent analysis of that verbiage."--Peter Kenez, University of California, Santa Cruz

Media plays a specific role within modern society. It has been and continues to be a tool for spreading terrorist messages. However, it can just as easily be used as a tool for countering terrorism. During these challenging times where both international and domestic terrorism continue to threaten the livelihoods of citizens, it is imperative that studies are undertaken to examine the media's role in the spread of terrorism, as well as to explore strategies and protocols that can be put in place to mitigate the spread. Media and Terrorism in the 21st Century presents the emerging ideas and insights from experts, academicians, and professionals on the role media and new media plays in terrorist propaganda from a critical international perspective. It examines the historical relation between media and terror and analyzes the difficulties and obstacles presented by the relation in the 21st century. Covering topics such as AI-based dataveillance, media development trends, and virtual terrorism, this book is an indispensable resource for government officials, communications experts, politicians, security professionals, sociologists, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

A leading foreign correspondent looks at how social media has transformed the modern battlefield, and how wars are fought Modern warfare is a war of narratives, where bullets are fired both physically and virtually. Whether you are a president or a terrorist, if you don't understand how to deploy the power of social media effectively you may win the odd battle but you will lose a twenty-first century war. Here, journalist David Patrikarakos draws on unprecedented access to key players to provide a new narrative for modern warfare. He travels thousands of miles across continents to meet a de-radicalized female member of ISIS recruited via Skype, a liberal Russian in Siberia who takes a job manufacturing "Ukrainian" news, and many others to explore the way social media has transformed the way we fight, win, and consume wars-and what this means for the world going forward.

A CNN contributor, former Ted Cruz staffer, and "Never Trump" adherent reveals a shocking truth: Donald Trump’s lies and fabrications don’t horrify America—they enthrall us—and explains how we can avoid falling for them.

"Can you believe what Donald Trump said?"

In Gaslighting America, Carpenter breaks down Trump’s formula, showing why it’s practically foolproof, playing his victims, the media, the Democrats, and the Republican fence-sitters perfectly. She traces how this tactic started with Nixon, gained traction with Bill Clinton, and exploded under Trump. If you think Trump is driving you crazy, it’s because he is. Now, in this urgent book, she explains how to withstand the fire. Where some people see lies, Trump’s fierce followers see something different. A commitment to winning at all costs; there is nothing he could say that would erode their support at long as it’s in the name of taking down his political enemies.

His opponents on the left and right continue to act as if his fake narratives and conspiracy theories will bring him down, when in fact, they are the ruses that raised him up.

As a conservative former staffer to a competing presidential campaign, Amanda Carpenter witnessed her fellow Republicans fall in line behind Trump. As a political commentator, she was publicly smeared by one of his supporters on live television without a shred of evidence supporting the allegations. Slowly, she watched her entire party succumb to Trump and become defenders of his tactics, and Gaslighting America may be the only hope to bring them back to reality.

This unique and innovative book fuses journalism with both psychology and biology to create a new scaffolding where primal literacy is the guiding force to covering high-risk environments. When humans are in high-stress situations, their perceptions of reality can be easily deceived and manipulated. What is safe, moral, truthful, and brave can be distorted, unless the journalist has a strong core in primal literacy.This text remedies this oversight by showing the mechanisms of primal literacy and survival instincts to create a powerful and reliable scaffolding with internal, external, and ecological validity. Readers are shown how to cover dangerous events using journalism and evolutionary psychology to avoid falling for propaganda or bringing further danger to the reporter and news consumer; however, these methods can easily be applied to any situation in times of both war and peace.

A multi-scale ethnography of government pedagogy in Colombia and its impact on peace. Colombia's 2016 peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas sought to end fifty years of war and won President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet Colombian society rejected it in a polarizing referendum, amid an emotive disinformation campaign. Gwen Burnyeat joined the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, the government institution responsible for peace negotiations, to observe and participate in an innovative "peace pedagogy" strategy to explain the agreement to Colombian society. Burnyeat's multi-scale ethnography reveals the challenges government officials experienced communicating with skeptical audiences and translating the peace process for public opinion. She argues that the fatal flaw in the peace process lay in government-society relations, enmeshed in culturally liberal logics and shaped by the politics of international donors. The Face of Peace offers the Colombian case as a mirror to the global crisis of liberalism, shattering the fantasy of rationality that haunts liberal responses to "post-truth" politics.