To Name The Bigger Lie by Sarah Viren

This is both very good and very well written. It is a memoir that explores the meaning of truth by examining two different times in her life when men hurt her by spinning a narrative of lies--so it is two interwoven stories about manipulative men and how they affected her, how she responded to them, and what she learned about herself and the world around her as a result. The first is a high school teacher who is a homophobic Holocaust denier who promulgates his paranoid world view in the guise of teaching philosophy and the questioning of the world around you. The other is a man who she had a casual acquaintance with who uses a sexual harassment lie to try to sink both her and her wife's academic careers. She uses these two life changing events to unfold a story of who she is and how she came to be that way. The author makes it plain, if it isn’t already to everyone, that an escalating disregard for reason and fact poses an existential danger to individuals and democracy alike. She is warning us-- the resurgence of antisemitism and white supremacy expressed in hoary conspiracy theories are a sign of rising totalitarianism. Do with it what you will.