Book Review: The Power of Perception – When Reality Loses the Battle

The Power of Perception – When Reality Loses the Battle, by Serbian political scientist and frequent Kyiv Post contributor Orhan Dragaš, belongs neither to the West nor to the East. It belongs to everyone who understands that truth has become a global casualty. Dragaš writes from Belgrade, yet his thought is European, universal, and equally intelligible in London, Kyiv, or Berlin. He understands what many refuse to see – that Russian aggression is not only military but epistemological, a war against the very idea of a shared understanding of the world. When the ground beneath us becomes relative, every lie gains a chance to become truth.

Not satisfied with the diagnosis, Dragaš offers a cure – the restoration of trust through responsibility and dialogue. He shows clearly that without shared facts, there can be no shared future. His book does not promise utopia; it issues a demand – that everyone take a share of responsibility for the truth. This is what unites journalism and philosophy, morality and knowledge.

In a world where lies travel faster than light, Dragaš writes against the current. He does not aim to persuade but to clarify.

This book carries additional weight because it comes from an author who, through his work at the Kyiv Post, has been among the few in the Balkans to support Ukraine’s struggle for truth, freedom, and dignity without compromise. His texts have been part of the same battle in which his book now stands – the fight against lies as state policy, against manipulation as strategy, and against perception as a substitute for reality.

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In a time when Europe wavers between confusion and complacency, The Power of Perception arrives as a necessary reminder that democracy cannot survive without truth. Dragaš reminds us that every lie, if left unchallenged, becomes an institution. And societies that make peace with lies lose the ability to defend themselves.

What is particularly striking about this book is its composure. Dragaš does not dramatize the collapse of truth; he measures it, dissects it, and shows that behind every algorithm, behind every viral lie, stands a person who has given up thinking. That may be the book’s deepest message – that technology is not the enemy but the mirror.

In an age where truth is measured by clicks, The Power of Perception restores the measure of thought. When lies become an industry, Dragaš reminds us that words still carry weight. The book is valuable not merely because it speaks about the world, but because it understands it.

Dragaš has written a work that does not soothe but awakens. A book that, in the finest tradition of European intellectual resistance, defends truth not out of nostalgia, but out of responsibility.