Brooke Gladstone

"Reality. It used to seem so simple -- reality just was, like the weather. Why question it, let alone disagree about it? And then came the assault, and unending stream of 'fake news, ' 'alternative facts, ' and lies disguised as truths, all of it overwhelming our notions of reality. Now we can't even agree on what a fact is, let alone what is real. How on earth did we get here? Here's how."--

In the summer of 1968 television news changed forever. Dead last in the ratings, ABC hired two towering public intellectuals to debate each other during the Democratic and Republican national conventions. William F. Buckley Jr. was a leading light of the new conservative movement. A Democrat and cousin to Jackie Onassis, Gore Vidal was a leftist novelist and polemicist. Armed with deep-seated distrust and enmity, Vidal and Buckley believed each other's...