In The Disinformation Age, editors W. Lance Bennett and Steven Livingston assemble a distinguished group of interdisciplinary researchers to examine the contemporary scourge of politically motivated disinformation in civil society. They sustain a novel, coherent argument throughout (which is, in itself, an unusual feat for an edited volume). That argument, in a nutshell, is that the foremost engineers of American “truth decay” are capitalists and capitalism.

Bennett and Livingston summarize the case in chapter 1, describing how a network of libertarian ideologues bankrolled a systematic effort over several decades to dismantle public trust in informational authorities and other public institutions (e.g., peer-reviewed science, higher education, the mainstream media, and nonpartisan government agencies). Chapters 4 (by Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, and Charlie Tyson) and 5 (by Nancy MacLean) further this argument, homing in on the efforts of mid-century business interests (chapter 4) and the Koch family (chapter 5). This is important because, as various contributors to the volume point out, if there is no shared public trust in informational authorities, there can be no shared public truth either—which opens the door for propagandists to take advantage.

Other chapters focus blame on the unfettered free market itself. They point to the deregulation of political communication in particular, which has produced an asymmetrical right-wing echo chamber of persistent, reinforcing deception (chapter 2, by Yochai Benkler) and a “flooded zone” of degraded digital information sources that distract, stupefy, overwhelm, and polarize the body politic (chapters 3, by Paul Starr, and 6, by Dave Karpf).

Much of the volume is devoted to exploring potential remedies. In chapter 6, Dave Karpf calls on online media giants, political elites, and the legacy press to regulate/monitor themselves, whereas in chapter 7, Heidi Tworek draws historical lessons from Germany’s Weimar Republic to advocate reforms designed to fortify democracy. In chapter 8, Ben Epstein explains why regulating disinformation is so challenging and offers a set of standards for doing it judiciously. Chapters 9 (by Patricia Aufderheide) and 10 (by Victor Pickard) make the case for an expanded and redesigned model of public broadcasting as a bulwark against disinformation. Finally, in chapter 11, Bennett and Livingston call for tax reforms that would remove protections for faux-philanthropic organizations whose mission it is to undermine democratic institutions. The volume’s pragmatic devotion to offering potential solutions is a real strength. Several of those proposed solutions—campaign finance reform, tax reform, other democratic reforms—are well worn in other contexts, but they are novel as applied to this context (at least as far as I have seen). The ideas for strengthening public broadcasting, in my view, were particularly compelling.

The Disinformation Age also succeeds as history, providing rich narratives of how political communication has evolved over the past 50 years, and of how libertarian political mobilization emerged and matured. In so doing, the volume may find more of an enthusiastic audience among historians than political scientists, the latter of whom tend to prefer more data-driven accounts (such as that in chapter 2, by Yochai Benkler).

The volume’s interdisciplinary approach is another selling point. By bringing together scholars of communication, politics, history, sociology, international affairs, public policy, and even geology and literature(!), Bennett and Livingston have organized a remarkable collaboration of diverse intellectual perspectives. As I already mentioned, some readers will surely yearn for more social science, but the scholarly breadth of the volume’s contributors is undeniably noteworthy and commendable.

The best part of The Disinformation Age, though, is the argument itself. Criticism of the “Kochtopus” and others—and of the underlying laissez-faire system such libertarian ideologues protect—is not new. But I have not seen such a systematic critique applied to the “post-truth” crisis, specifically. In the wake of standard explanations emphasizing (1) the tools of disinformation (partisan media, online media, social media) and/or (2) the static psychology of motivated reasoning, the focus on political economy in this volume feels fresh. Rather than ignoring or dismissing the customary explanations, the authors incorporate them as elements of their broader thesis.

Of course, this leftist critique is sure to encounter pushback from neoliberals at the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Chamber of Commerce, and others, not to mention the business community more generally. The free-market devotees, who have sought to distinguish their brand of ideological conservatism from its more recent populist/Trumpist/insurrectionist manifestation—even locking arms with center-left groups in rhetorically rejecting the nativistic, nationalistic, nihilistic, and anti-intellectual tendencies of the New Right—must confront in these pages the possibility that they contributed to the problem. Such provocativeness on the part of Bennett, Livingston, and their colleagues—and the debate it will inspire—is a hallmark of an important book.

The volume could have been even stronger had it included more description of exactly how the alleged cabal of free-marketeers and their cherished economic system have supposedly undermined higher education, the scientific community, and political parties (as Bennett and Livingston contend), in addition to the media landscape. The volume only mentions in passing the Right’s growing disenchantments with academia and experts of all kinds (which may have been just as important to disinformation’s rise as the changing media landscape). This media-centric approach may limit its influence with scholars outside the field of political communication.

In that same vein, by putting so much onus on the libertarian Right, the volume might discount cultural conservatives’ existential drive to deceive in response to the steady decline of white, patriarchal, Christian, straight America.

Finally, the volume ignores some explanations for the decline in authoritative institutions that are critical of intellectuals themselves—including the widespread perception that they are indistinguishable from the cultural Left. Although conspiratorial claims of left-wing brainwashing in classrooms and newsrooms have always been fantastical (which is not to say that no persuasion is ever attempted), it is undeniable that very few members of the intelligentsia voted for Trump (and not too many voted for Romney, McCain, or Bush either). This volume might have benefited from acknowledging such ideological asymmetry, and the suspicion it may sow on the populist Right. Moreover, conservatives are not wrong to point out that Enlightenment values such as rationality, objectivity, and empiricism have grown quite unfashionable in many academic quarters (especially in the humanities). Nor are they unreasonable to suspect that the propagation of such “postmodern” pedagogy over the past two generations may have contributed to diminishing the public square.

At the end of the day, though, a book’s purpose is not to present and evaluate all relevant arguments. It is to make an argument, and to do it well. By any measure, The Disinformation Age achieves that goal. In coming years, it should be central to ongoing conversations about how the American marketplace of ideas became a marketplace of realities, and what to do about it.