From the recipient of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, an impassioned and inspiring memoir of a career spent holding power to account. Maria Ressa is one of the most renowned international journalists of our time. For decades, she challenged corruption and malfeasance in her native country, the Philippines, on its rocky path from an authoritarian state to a democracy. As a reporter from CNN, she transformed news coverage in her region, which led her in 2012 to create a new and innovative online news organization, Rappler. Harnessing the emerging power of social media, Rappler crowdsourced breaking news, found pivotal sources and tips, harnessed collective action for climate change, and helped increase voter knowledge and participation in elections. Democracy is fragile. How to Stand Up to a Dictator is an urgent cry for Western readers to recognize and understand the dangers to our freedoms before it is too late. It is a book for anyone who might take democracy for granted, written by someone who never would. And in telling her dramatic and turbulent and courageous story, Ressa forces readers to ask themselves the same question she and her colleagues ask every day: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth?

Foreword / by Amal Clooney -- Prologue: The invisible atom bomb : live in the (present) moment (of the past) -- Part I: Homecoming: Power, the press, and the Philippines, 1963-2004. The golden rule : make the choice to learn -- The honor code : draw the line -- The speed of trust : be vulnerable -- The mission of journalism : be honest -- Part II: The rise of Facebook, Rappler, and the Internet's black hole, 2005-2017. The network effect : hitting the tipping point -- Creating ripples of change : build a team -- How friends of friends brought democracy down : think slow, not fast -- How the rule of law crumbled from within : silence is complicity -- Part III: Crackdown, arrests, elections, and the fight for our future, 2018-present. Surviving a thousand cuts : believe in the good -- Don't become a monster : embrace your fear -- Hold the line : what doesn't kill you makes you stronger -- Why fascism is winning : collaborate, collaborate, collaborate -- Epilogue -- 2021 Nobel Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov's 10-point plan to address the information crisis.