Fantasyland how America went haywire : a 500-year history
"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 ultimat...
| Main Author: | Andersen, Kurt, 1954- (Author) |
|---|---|
| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Random House,
[2017]
|
| Edition: | First edition. |
| Subjects: |
Table of Contents:
- Now entering fantasyland
- Part I. The conjuring of America: 1517-1789
- I believe, therefore I am right: the Protestants
- All that glitters: the gold-seekers
- Building our own private heaven on Earth: the puritans
- The God-given freedom to believe in God
- Imaginary friends and enemies: the early satanic panics
- The first me century: religion gets American
- Meanwhile, in the 18th century reality-based community
- Part II. United States of amazing: the 1800s
- The first great delirium
- The all-American fan fiction of Joseph Smith, prophet
- Quack nation: magical but modern ?
- Fantastic business: the gold rush inflection point
- In search of monsters to destroy: the conspiracy-theory habit
- The war between states of mind
- Ten million little houses on the prairie
- Fantasy industrialized
- Part III. A long arc bending toward reason: 1900-1960
- Progress and backlash
- The biggest backlash: brand new old-time religion
- The business of America is show business
- Big rock candy mountains: utopia in the suburbs and the sun
- The 1950s seemed so normal
- Part IV. Big bang: the 1960s and 70s
- Big bang: the hippies
- Big bang: the intellectuals
- Big bang: the Christians
- Big bang: politics and government and conspiracies
- Big bang: living in a land of entertainment
- Part V. Fantasyland scales: from the 1980s through the turn of the century
- Making make-believe more realistic and real life more make-believe
- Forever young: kids r us syndrome
- The Reagan era and the start of the digital age
- American religion from the turn of the millennium
- Our wilder christianities: belief and practice
- America versus the godless civilized world: why are we so exceptional?
- Magical but not necessarily christian, spiritual but not religious
- Blue-chip witch doctors: the re-enchantment of medicine
- How the mainstream enabled fantasyland: squishies, cynics and believers
- Anything goes
- unless it picks my pocket or break my leg
- Part VI. The problem with fantasyland: from the 1980s to the present and beyond
- The inmates running the asylum decide monsters are everywhere
- Reality is a conspiracy: the x-filing of America
- Mad as hell, the new voice of the people
- When the GOP went off the rails
- Liberals denying science
- Gun crazy
- Final fantasy-industrial complex
- Our inner children? They're going to Disney World!
- The economic dreamtime
- As fantasyland goes, so goes the nation.