...unlike 1969 we now live in an age of massive information AND dis-information.
A reasonable proposition. The error many make in that respect is to consider only Establishment sources as disinformative and respect "maverick" or self-proclaimed truth-seekers as conversely informative. It cheapens the debate because it sets aside all the factual and expert analysis and simply reduces it to a matter of politics or preconceived loyalties. The simple summary is that where space is concerned, there are a lot of people who, for whatever reason, delight in spewing quite a lot of bunk. What might give you pause is the notion that among aerospace and scientific specialists, there simply is no controversy over whether Apollo was real. It is rare almost to extinction to find anyone who disputes the science of the Moon missions who can actually speak about it with an expert understanding. When the relevant experts unanimously agree on a thing, it's hard to argue that it's "really" fake.
Let me also endorse the book you were recommended. I have read it, and it's meant to bridge most of the gap between high school physics and professional aerospace where Apollo is concerned.
On my shelf I have several of the standard references in spacecraft design, control, and propulsion. These are naturally dense tomes, as they're mean to inform those who do that sort of thing as their profession. While it may seem exotic and romantic, spacecraft design today is pursued no differently than designing cars or airplanes, and for the same private and commercial purposes. There is considerable disadvantage and liability in producing products that do not function as requested. Hence there is no value in writing reference books of duplicitous or vacuous claims.
The problems of control, for example, make extensive use of linear algebra, calculus, and control theory -- subjects that are beyond nearly every high school students and even most college students who do not pursue a math or engineering background. These tools allow us to reason about control problems using a generalized framework. It's how the "pros" do it. But try to explain equivalent concepts in a high school physics class would be problematic, as most would simply not yet have had the mathematical background or understanding. There is little value in describing some other way of solving those problems, because that's not how the problems are actually solved. Hence you may have been exposed to quite a number of simplifications and approximations. These are not necessarily wrong, but it will require some additional effort to extend a high school understanding to a full appreciation of Apollo.
Those same methods used today to control spacecraft were used in Apollo -- and in many cases developed for Apollo. In addition to the modern references, I have several feet of shelf space containing papers written back in the 1960s. The same mind-numbing math appears in them, in some cases even more complicated: the LM, for example, used a non-orthogonal set of control axes in order simplify control along its specialized flight path. This is important because if Apollo were hoaxed, then we question why such rigorous underpinnings need to be provided for a cover story. And if that rigor actually pans out in real life, then what was to prevent Apollo from actually working? A throw-away cover story abandons detail after a certain amount of effort. And diligent students will subsequently discover that deficiency. Conversely, successful deception avoids verifiable details. It paints in broad strokes. NASA provides volume after volume of verifiable detail, and decades of ongoing interest have focused considerable expert attention on that detail.
For example, the design of the onboard computer has survived. Hobbyists have rebuilt versions of it. Other hobbyists have written software emulators. The original computer source code has survived, and runs on those emulators. It actually does what the Apollo documents say it will do. So you have to ask yourself why NASA would design a fully functional flight computer and write fully functional computer programs for it if none of that were ever really going to be used.
