Available at
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/empire-of-lies-paul-craig-roberts/1143198640?ean=9788793987494
Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2023
This is the best of several books by PCR I’ve read. I like the layout, with topics grouped in such a way that you can inform yourself about them by category.
PCR is careful with his prose. He doesn’t assert certainty unless he really is certain, and he uses conditional language wherever that’s appropriate.
If you want to get up to speed on current events and recent, relevant history with one book, this is the one to buy.
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2023
In a nutshell, this collection of essays is an exposé of major deceptions in five critical areas. In addition to a detailed chapter on deception vis-à-vis economics, which was PCR’s formal profession as a professor at US universities and as the chief of economic policy under President Ronald Reagan, he also tackles US foreign policy, notably the War in Ukraine, September 11, COVID-19 vaccines, and the unreliability of the corporate media. While I don’t agree with everything in the book, it is intellectually honest and unhindered by political correctness, which is a rarity in the current age of self-censorship. The book represents a refreshing novel account of current and past events that shaped the 21th century from the perspective of a highly critical and analytical Washington insider.
What is particular refreshing about the book is that the author is clearly not representing nor defending the left or the right. This is not a political manifest; the author’s stated intention is to get to the truth wherever it leads.
The stated long-term intention with the book is to provide even-handed analyses that give the readers ideas on how to decipher deceptions that we might encounter in ensuing years. If PCR is right, truth will become criminalized and self-censorship will increase. To mediate this dilemma, we need to educate ourselves on how the establishment sets up traps for us. In this regard, on page 23, he delves into memory and recounts a conversation with James Jesus Angleton, the head of CIA counterintelligence, who informed him on how the CIA creates elaborate, long-lasting deceptions. PCR uses the information to critically examine the purported Saudi-connection to 9/11.
This is an excellent book – certainly the best from PCR that I have read to date. I recommend it without hesitation.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 12, 2023
This book is a collection of the author’s articles from his website and if you are not familiar with his position on many issues then you are probably in for a shock or at least a rethink. Assuming you are open to other perspectives that is.
The author is a clear and frank writer, a truth seeker with a very relevant background for many of the issues he discusses. Brits may think that there is another laughing face missing from the front cover.
The first half of the book is quite repetitive, covering the rigging of gold pricing by the Fed to bolster the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency but probably needs this repetition for the extent of the activities to sink in.
Personally, I found chapter 3 (The Ukraine Deception) very compelling reading and yes, sad, given the number of Ukrainians and Russians dying daily – adding to the many Iraqi, Afghan and other casualties of the age of hegemon wars.
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