"Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann is a book published in 1922. It examines how people construct simplified mental images of complex reality through stereotypes and "pseudo-environments," making functional democracy challenging. Lippmann explores how mass media shape public perception, how news inherently involves selection and bias, and why he believes a specialized class of experts must analyze information for society. This influential work sparked debate about democracy, expertise, and the manufacture of consent. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
These books are free to read. Each is in the public domain in the United States; check your own country's rules before you copy or share one.