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alexisrt 's review for:
Kevin Young is the poetry editor of the New Yorker, and if you didn't already know that, you'd guess immediately from the style--the book reads like a 500 page New Yorker article, or perhaps collection of articles. The title fairly accurately summarizes the contents, which dip into the lengthy history of America's (and to some extent the world's) complicated relationship with the notion of truth, from P.T. Barnum to "fake news."He's particularly interested in the role of race--from how the black body became an object for public display, stripping them of their humanity, and how our views on race have shaped and enabled hucksters' ability to defraud the public.
Young's background is in literary criticism, and his analysis skews somewhat towards that, rather than to a strictly historical accounting. It's a fascinating read, but not necessarily a purely pleasurable one.
Young's background is in literary criticism, and his analysis skews somewhat towards that, rather than to a strictly historical accounting. It's a fascinating read, but not necessarily a purely pleasurable one.