Lies That Kill: A Citizen's Guide to Disinformation

Elaine Kamarck — a senior fellow at Brookings and author of the standard academic text on the American primary system — and Darrell West — the founding director of Brookings's Center for Technology Innovation — produced this citizen's guide to disinformation at a moment when the field had accumulated enough research to produce genuinely useful practical guidance. The book covers the major categories of disinformation (health, political, electoral), the psychological mechanisms that make false information sticky, and the range of responses available to individuals, institutions, and governments.

What distinguishes this from similar accounts is its policy orientation and its Brookings imprimatur: Kamarck and West write for policymakers and informed citizens rather than specialists, and their policy recommendations are calibrated to the political constraints of the American context. For practitioners who need accessible, well-sourced materials to share with clients or to inform policy advocacy, this book is one of the more practically useful recent additions to the field. The Brookings brand gives it credibility in government and corporate settings where more academic titles may not land as effectively.