A sharp and timely exploration of the dark art of manipulation through weaponized storytelling, from the best-selling author of Four Lost Cities. In Stories Are Weapons, bestselling author Annalee Newitz traces the way disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats―the essential tool kit for psychological warfare―have evolved from military weapons deployed against foreign adversaries into tools in domestic culture wars. Newitz delves into America’s deep-rooted history with psychological operations, beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s Revolutionary War–era fake newspaper and nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, and reaching its apotheosis with the Cold War and twenty-first-century influence campaigns online. America’s secret weapon has long been coercive storytelling. And there’s a reason for that: operatives who shaped modern psychological warfare drew on their experiences as science fiction writers and in the advertising industry.

Now, through a weapons-transfer program long unacknowledged, psyops have found their way into the hands of culture warriors, transforming democratic debates into toxic wars over American identity. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBT students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints, revealing how, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Crucially, Newitz delivers a powerful counternarrative, speaking with the researchers and activists who are outlining a pathway to achieving psychological disarmament and cultural peace.

Incisive and essential, Stories are Weapons reveals how our minds have been turned into blood-soaked battlegrounds―and how we can put down our weapons to build something better.

REVIEWS

"Annalee Newitz’s thoroughly researched and masterfully crafted book gives us something hopeful―a way to disarm the narratives that have been used against us and reclaim better ones."― Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Immense World

"A brilliant historical deep-dive into psyops, military covert influence operations, and the corporate attempts to conquer the mind. This will change the way you understand America."―Molly Crabapple, author of Drawing Blood

"Well-researched, accessible, and grounded in history, Stories Are Weapons is at once clarifying, terrifying, and forward-looking. An important contribution to a particular moment in time when so many of us are desperate to try to understand the precarious societal moment and peril in which we find ourselves."― Anna Holmes, author of The Book of Jezebel

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Annalee Newitz writes fiction and nonfiction about the intersection of science, technology and culture.

Their first novel, Autonomous, won the Lambda Literary Award and was nominated for the Nebula and Locus Awards. Their book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember was nominated for the LA Times Book Award. They are currently a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times. Previously, they were the founding editor of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo and as the tech culture editor at Ars Technica. They have also written for publications including Wired, Popular Science, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Slate, Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and more. They have published short stories in Lightspeed, Shimmer, Apex, and Technology Review's Twelve Tomorrows.

Annalee is the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast, Our Opinions Are Correct. They were the recipient of a Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT, worked as a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and has a Ph.D. in English and American Studies from UC Berkeley. Learn more at AnnaleeNewitz.com or follow them on Twitter @annaleen

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 4, 2024
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393881512
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393881516
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1 x 9.3 inches