Radio 4 Book of the Week

How to Stand Up to a Dictator

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2021 
 
What will you sacrifice for the truth? 
 
Maria Ressa has spent decades speaking truth to power. But her work tracking disinformation networks seeded by her own government, spreading lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate, has landed her in trouble with the most powerful man in the country: President Duterte. 
 
Now, hounded by the state, she has multiple arrest warrants against her name, and a potential 100+ years behind bars to prepare for - while she stands trial for speaking the truth. 
 
How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms. It maps a network of disinformation - a heinous web of cause and effect - that has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars, to America's Capitol Hill, to Britain's Brexit, to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare, to Facebook and Silicon Valley, to our own clicks and our own votes. 
 
Told from the frontline of the digital war, this is Maria Ressa's urgent cry for us to wake up and hold the line, before it is too late. 
 
Praise for Maria Ressa: 
Winner of the UNESCO Press Freedom Award 2021 
'A personal hero of mine ... she's an important warning for the rest of us' 
Hillary Clinton 
'Maria Ressa is 5ft 2in, but she stands taller than most in her pursuit of the truth' 
Amal Clooney 
'Maria is a key voice ... she is so incredible in so many ways' 
Carole Cadwalladr

Absolutely sublime and transformational. [Maria Ressa] lays out the moral paradigm for our time and the consequences of ignoring it and the thrill and reward of embracing it

Shoshana Zuboff, author of the international bestselling Surveillance Capitalism

A personal hero of mine ... she's an important warning for the rest of us

I don't think I've read a more important book this year.

Maria is a key voice... she is so incredible in so many ways. The world needs to listen to what she has to say

Maria Ressa is five feet two inches, but she stands taller than most in her pursuit of the truth

So how do you stand up to a dictator? One thing is for sure: you cannot do it alone. Ressa needs support from all of us, and she needs it now

Tales of a moral giant... All of these attempts to raise the alarm came to nothing, so it is hardly surprising that Ressa's inspiring book has an impassioned, frustrated and, at times, angry tone. She saw the future and knew how it didn't work for democracy. And nobody except the Nobel committee seemed to be paying attention. For which mercy, much thanks

Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa's How to Stand Up to a Dictator makes an unmissable Book of the Week. It is a memoir of a life devoted to truth-telling, an account of her battle to expose the reality behind the Philippines' former president Rodrigo Duterte's so-called war on drugs, and a brilliant dissection of the "virus of lies" generated on social media platforms.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator is confronting, even terrifying - but feels vital... This book lays bare how big tech companies are allowing democracy to be eroded through the dissemination of disinformation, and the devastating effects it can have on a nation...Ressa spends her days on bail awaiting her next court hearing. The rest of us should be watching with bated breath. In the meantime, the least we can do is read this book, learn from it and pass it on to everyone we know.

At a time when the world faces a stark choice between authoritarian leaders and those with the courage to stand up to them, Maria Ressa is an indispensable guide in showing us the path from our troubled present to a better future

**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2021 
 
What will you sacrifice for the truth? 
 
Maria Ressa has spent decades speaking truth to power. But her work tracking disinformation networks seeded by her own government, spreading lies to its own citizens laced with anger and hate, has landed her in trouble with the most powerful man in the country: President Duterte. 
 
Now, hounded by the state, she has multiple arrest warrants against her name, and a potential 100+ years behind bars to prepare for - while she stands trial for speaking the truth. 
 
How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms. It maps a network of disinformation - a heinous web of cause and effect - that has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars, to America's Capitol Hill, to Britain's Brexit, to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare, to Facebook and Silicon Valley, to our own clicks and our own votes. 
 
Told from the frontline of the digital war, this is Maria Ressa's urgent cry for us to wake up and hold the line, before it is too late. 
 
Praise for Maria Ressa: 
Winner of the UNESCO Press Freedom Award 2021 
'A personal hero of mine ... she's an important warning for the rest of us' 
Hillary Clinton 
'Maria Ressa is 5ft 2in, but she stands taller than most in her pursuit of the truth' 
Amal Clooney 
'Maria is a key voice ... she is so incredible in so many ways' 
Carole Cadwalladr

Maria Ressa

This is a timely and crucial book. It provides a clear plan for how to save democracy in the age of AI. Equally important, it gives readers the courage to hold the line.

Yuval Noah Harrari, bestselling author of 'Sapiens'

An inspirational – and deeply practical – guide to re-writing the authoritarian playbook by someone who has herself retaliated against tyranny

Everyone who cares about what’s happening in the world as national and tech dictators exercise greater unaccountable power over our lives needs to read this book right now to learn from Maria Ressa how to wage 'The Fight Back.' You couldn’t have a better guide than Maria, a brave journalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who stood against both Duerte and Zuckerberg despite their best efforts to ignore and silence her. She’s taken the lessons she learned to tell all of us how we can overcome fear and despair to hold leaders responsible for the harms they’re causing. This is the call to action we need now.

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Maria Ressa is a relentless and fearless leader who ignites a room and leaves you wanting more. Clear, urgent and gobsmackingly necessary, The Fight Back is the next best thing to having Maria in your pocket: an impeccable guide to where we are, where we need to go and what each of us can do to get there.

Baroness Beeban Kidron, UK Crossbench Peer and author of USERS, How Big Tech Took Control and How to Fight Back

The Fight Back is nothing less than a survival guide for democracy. Drawing on her own experiences as a journalist, media founder and public intellectual, Maria Ressa lays out with dazzling clarity the way in which political and technological autocrats are destroying not just democracy but humanity itself, and offers a practical, step-by-step guide for resistance. For anyone who’s ever said change is impossible, The Fight Back lays out clearly what each of us must do in this moment. Buy everyone you know a copy.

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO, Committee to Protect Journalists

This is a manifesto for our times: a bold, brilliant, gut-punch of a book, with an inbuilt action plan for change. The plan is forged from Maria’s experience as a target of legal, financial, physical and online attacks, all designed to silence her - but instead they lit a fire.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC, human rights lawyer

A Citizen's Guide to Standing Up to Dictators

Nobel-prize winning, bestselling author Maria Ressa provides a frontline guide to understanding, defending, and rebuilding democracy in the age of AI, with 10 strategic goals broken down into 100 concrete actions citizens can take right nowThe window for saving democracy is closing. Authoritarian elections around the world have taught us what happens when citizens don’t hold the line and Western democracies begin to fall. 
 
It’s time for the fight back. 
 
As Maria Ressa knowingly writes, we face three convergent crises: 
• The crisis of truth: Tech platforms and AI have destroyed our information ecosystem, making shared reality impossible. 
• The crisis of order: The United States—the nation that built the post-war international system—is now dismantling it, launching illegal military operations, killing its own citizens in the streets, and arresting journalists who document it. 
• The crisis of accountability: Institutions have been captured, law weaponized, and those with power answer to no one. 
 
The Fight Back is a must-read resistance manifesto—written by someone who survived the dictator’s playbook firsthand, grounded in frontline experience from multiple continents, with specific frameworks for immediate action in the age of AI—and in a moment when the world order is being remade before our eyes.

Maria Ressa

Praise for The Fight Back

This is a timely and crucial book. It provides a clear plan for how to save democracy in the age of AI. Equally important, it gives readers the courage to hold the line.

An inspirational – and deeply practical – guide to re-writing the authoritarian playbook by someone who has herself retaliated against tyranny

Everyone who cares about what’s happening in the world as national and tech dictators exercise greater unaccountable power over our lives needs to read this book right now to learn from Maria Ressa how to wag ...

This is a timely and crucial book. It provides a clear plan for how to save democracy in the age of AI. Equally important, it gives readers the courage to hold the line.

An inspirational – and deeply practical – guide to re-writing the authoritarian playbook by someone who has herself retaliated against tyranny

Everyone who cares about what’s happening in the world as national and tech dictators exercise greater unaccountable power over our lives needs to read this book right now to learn from Maria Ressa how to wag ...

This is a timely and crucial book. It provides a clear plan for how to save democracy in the age of AI. Equally important, it gives readers the courage to hold the line.

An inspirational – and deeply practical – guide to re-writing the authoritarian playbook by someone who has herself retaliated against tyranny

Everyone who cares about what’s happening in the world as national and tech dictators exercise greater unaccountable power over our lives needs to read this book right now to learn from Maria Ressa how to wag ...

Books by Maria Ressa

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter