As a user manual for a deeper understanding of current political speech (especially American), this book aims at clarifying and opening readers’ eyes, and at the same time opening debate among voters, about strategies at work in political communication today. Dealing with racism from a linguistic aspect, Mather Saul straightforwardly discusses basic concepts related to this controversial issue which, at times, have been silenced or tabooed. The definition of racist dogwhistles and figleaves in communication make an extensive section of the volume, as well as other interesting items in political speech such as blatant falsehood, bullshitting, and conspiracism.

Although the use of dogwhistles and figleaves are not unique in racist speech and not unique in political communication, it is these two areas that Mather Saul focuses on. The use of racist dogwhistles involves the presence of racist content that is not apparent to a group of hearers but understandable for others, and therefore, a strategical resource to appeal to racist voters without banishing those other potential supporters who prefer not to be identified as such. Intentional, unintentional, visual—many examples are given to illustrate this effective communicative strategy. Figleaves, by contrast, are little information tags aimed at diminishing, in this case, the racist background in the affirmation given. Donald Trump, by negatively labelling immigration in general but then attempting to diminish it by vaguely guessing that some immigrants might be good people, is an active user of this strategy in his campaigns, as it is extensively exemplified in the book. That small addition after his racist comment allows certain voters to justify or just not be aware of the actual content and/or intention of his words.

Whether politicians (e.g. Trump) are bald-faced liars (lying consciously) or bullshitters (careless of the truth), creating division among media and among voters is one of their aims. Mather Saul reflects on several key aspects, such as the existence of the so-called post truth and the reliability and expectancy of such in political communication. There seems to be a gap in the expectation for the truth by electors, since the motto ‘politicians lie’ has become common ground and certain misinformation, which has been spread and then discovered by the audience, could have ended a politician's career in the past but nowadays is, let us say, tolerated. Within this tolerance, though, they do manage to create division in media and society. This is the case of conspiracy theories that are spread widely among society by social-media users, as well as by politicians themselves. Mather Saul wittily points out the fact that those politicians for whom the truth might not be an asset in political campaigns were initially entertainers and this could contribute to the vision of politics as entertainment as well.

In a nutshell, Mather Saul's work encourages reflection on the definition and consequence of lies, giving detailed examples of different strategies in which the truth was clearly disregarded in American and British political campaigns.