Subject Matter

Review: ‘Sandy Hook’ is vital reading in the post-truth age

Journalist Elizabeth Williamson’s new investigative piece is a bit for a longer period than the news attributes you may possibly be used to studying from her

“Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for the Truth” by Elizabeth Williamson (Dutton)

If you stand on a road corner all working day yelling at passersby, you could possibly access a several hundred people. If you do the same thing on the internet, that amount is comparatively limitless.

“Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Fight for the Truth” is specifically what it purports to be, however the title couldn’t have organized me for the degree of education I was about to get.

Journalist Elizabeth Williamson’s new investigative piece is a little bit extended than the information options you might be made use of to reading from her. “Sandy Hook” is split into virtually 30 chapters, each and every just one with as significantly treatment and integrity as the past.

Crammed with the most impeccable facts — the kinds that seldom make it into tight information experiences — Williamson draws on documented details to paint pertinent portraits of the family members and victims of the Dec. 14, 2012, taking pictures in Newtown, Connecticut. But only about a quarter of the e book focuses on Sandy Hook and the individuals involved. The rest is about the world wide web and the battle for truth.

Williamson, a aspect author in the Washington bureau of The New York Instances, waded as a result of brackish swamps of misinformation, disinformation and trauma to get there at a properly documented clarification of a tragedy, receipts in hand and nicely arranged in the book’s notes section.

Qualified corporation keeps the narrative momentum up, by no means stagnating on any 1 human being or subject matter. Williamson artfully lays foundations during, applying these contact factors to gently remind readers who’s who in the prolonged list of people today who appear in “Sandy Hook.”

That claimed, the e book is exhausting: vivid accounts of grief, heartbreaking facts of Sandy Hook, terrifying factors people have mentioned and completed in the dark anonymity of the online. The thick net of connections explored inside reaches from the 1995 Oklahoma Town bombing to QAnon and almost everything in among.

Someway, regardless of the depressing mother nature of the subject matter make any difference, “Sandy Hook” continues to be hopeful.

Conspiracies and our post-truth of the matter fact are matters that have turn into evergreen, making “Sandy Hook” one of the most vital books of 2022. Situations as recent as Joe Rogan’s fiasco with Spotify and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underscore the require for a comprehensive evaluation of the weather that permitted — and carries on to permit — dangerously false narratives to operate amok.

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