Why You Can Trust CNET Fact: '1984' tops Amazon's bestseller list
George Orwell's 1949 novel about a dystopian fascist regime that controls the media through historical revisionism has shot to the No.1 spot on Amazon's bestseller list.
The cover of the first edition.
"1984", a book written almost 70 years ago, has suddenly rocketed to the top spot on Amazon's bestseller list.
First published in 1949, the classic novel tells the story of a dystopian Britain presided over by the ever-watchful Big Brother and ruled by a tyrannical social elite called the Inner Party.
While Big Brother has entered the cultural lexicon as a catch-all for pervasive surveillance, "Newspeak" is synonymous with a language designed to convolute meaning and remove freedom of thought.
The government in "1984" is renowned for using "Newspeak." Orwell's carefully constructed doublespeak is applied by the fascist regime to control the media, distort truth and cow the populace. The protagonist of "1984" works for the Ministry of Truth, a government body that revises history and eradicates evidence that the government is lying.
As an aside, Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Donald Trump, went viral earlier this week for a fact-related incident. Conway labeled demonstrably untrue claims about inauguration attendance made by the White House press secretary as "alternative facts".
While correlation doesn't prove causality, it's curious to note that the US Constitution also made the bestseller list after comments from Trump last summer. A copy of the Constitution was used by Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq, to criticize the then-presidential nominee.
Life, Disrupted: In Europe, millions of refugees are still searching for a safe place to settle. Tech should be part of the solution. But is it? CNET investigates.
Does the Mac still matter? Apple execs tell why the MacBook Pro was over four years in the making, and why we should care.