Systematic attacks on the truth, supercharged through social media, trolling and cancel culture, have Americans angry, frustrated and unsure as to where to turn for knowledge. It’s a crisis of historic proportions, but author Jonathan Rauch argues we already have in place a structure from which to repel these assaults of disinformation. He locates it within the global network of professionals, experts and institutions that has transformed the human species into the sort of knowledge machine that can, for example, decode the genome of a new virus and design a vaccine on a global scale in a matter of days.

In his latest book,The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, Rauch challenges readers to understand and defend this system’s potential for harnessing disagreement and disinformation.