Werner Herzog has become a beloved icon in a culture that would absolutely not accommodate a young Werner Herzog. He was an ambitious, unpredictable auteur; now cinema is far more corporate and predictable. He was a fearsome risk-taker, shooting in warzones, threatening Klaus Kinski, and eating a shoe, and now health and safety protocols would constrain him. Still, we listen to a man like Herzog, perhaps to tell us what is going wrong. 

The Future of Truth is a short and digressive book that does the last thing we expect from the output of beloved cultural icons — it challenges us. In a time where “fake news” and artificial intelligence have made a lot of us concerned about defending facts against falsehoods, Herzog has turned a skeptical eye toward facts.