Press
The New Yorker "Briefly Noted"
October 3, 2011 (p. 79)
The
Influencing Machine, by Brooke Gladstone (Norton; $23.95).
Written by the co-host of NPR's excellentweekend program "On the Media,"
and niftily illustrated byJosh Neufeld, one of Harvey Pekar's old artist colleagues,
this graphic-novel-style approach is both hilarious and levelheaded as it
takes on issues like bias, objectivity, and the effect of the Internet on
the way we see and judge the events ofthe world. Gladstone cuts away the pseudo-academic
jargon and hysteria that have infected talk about media and rehearses the
debates with efficiency and wit. She is a realist with a sharp historical
sense — seeing things clear and avoiding lazy pieties and reactionary
forecasts of apocalypse. This is a comic book with zest and brains —
and it just might help a reader understand the brave new world.