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HAWAII STATE PUBLIC LIBRARY SYSTEM
Item Information
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Andersen, Kurt, 1954- author.
Subjects
National characteristics, American.
Popular culture -- United States -- History.
United States -- Civilization.
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by author:
Andersen, Kurt, 1954- author.
by title:
Fantasyland : how Am...
MARC Display
Fantasyland : how America went haywire : a 500-year history / Kurt Andersen.
by
Andersen, Kurt, 1954- author.
New York : Random House, c2017.
Subjects
National characteristics, American.
Popular culture -- United States -- History.
United States -- Civilization.
ISBN:
9781400067213 (hardcover) :
1400067219 (hardcover)
Description:
xiii, 462 pages ; 25 cm
Edition:
First edition.
Requests:
1
Summary:
Explains how the influences of dreamers, zealots, hucksters, and superstitious groups shaped America's tendency toward a rich fantasy life, citing the roles of individuals from P.T. Barnum to Donald Trump in perpetuating conspiracy theories, self-delusion, and magical thinking.
"In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, one of our sharpest observers, Kurt Andersen, demonstrates that what's happening in our country today--this strange, post-truth, 'fake news' moment we're all living through--is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by impresarios and their audiences, by hucksters and their suckers. Believe-whatever-you-want fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Over the course of five centuries--from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P.T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials--our peculiar love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies--every citizen free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. Little by little, and then more quickly in the last several decades, the American invent-your-own-reality legacy of the Enlightenment superseded its more sober, rational, and empirical parts. We gave ourselves over to all manner of crackpot ideas and make-believe lifestyles designed to console or thrill or terrify us. In Fantasyland, Andersen brilliantly connects the dots that define this condition, portrays its scale and scope, and offers a fresh, bracing explanation of how our American journey has deposited us here. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand the politics and culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book."--Jacket.
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Aiea Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
973 An
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Hanapepe Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
973 Andersen
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Hawaii Kai Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
973 An
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Hawaii State Library
Language, Literature & History
973 An
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Hilo Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
973 Andersen
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Kailua-Kona Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
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Kapolei Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
973 An
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Kealakekua Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
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Kihei Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
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Lihue Public Library
Adult Nonfiction
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