Praise for James' books
"[A] vivid analysis of how the business models and incentives currently prevailing in digital media render decent discourse all but inaudible"– on Post-Truth
Kazuo Ishiguro
“A timely and important book by one of the smartest of the new generation of journalists and thinkers.” – on Post-Truth
Alan Rusbridger
“A crisp, highly informative introduction to what ails the information industry and what can be done about it … Ball’s analysis of where the media have gone wrong is thorough and courageously even-handed.” – on Post-Truth
The Times
"A fascinating exposé of the world behind your screen. Timely, often disturbing, and so important" – on The System
Caroline Criado Perez
"Nimble and persuasive … Ball chronicles [how] the relentless commercial tracking of life online created an opening for more alarming intrusions" – on The System
The New York Times
"…could not be more timely. Ball clearly loves this technology he writes about, has empathy for its self-styled guardians and would-be revolutionaries, and fears it too. He knows, as well as any of us, how rotten it’s become and how much worse it could become." – on The System
Cory Doctorow
"An insightful book about the conspiracy movement compares it persuasively to a self-replicating disease . A disturbing study of the origins and resilience of an exceptionally versatile and pernicious network of paranoid digital malcontents" – on The Other Pandemic
Rafael Behr, The Guardian
"A worthwhile, pacy and well-written book. It is an important one, too. We need to understand why people are hoodwinked by and have faith in conspiracy theories because it is happening with increasing frequency." – on The Other Pandemic
The New Scientist
"Ball is a tech-savvy writer who worked with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks before it became a Moscow data dump. In The Other Pandemic, he tells the reader how an essentially adolescent male online culture of the early 2000s morphed into the Hydra-headed conspiracy theories of the 2020s."
David Aaronovitch, Financial Times