000			02972nam a2200337 i 4500
001			55637206
008			180614t20182017enk e b 000 0 eng d
020			_a9781785038679 _q(paperback)
020			_a1785038672 _q(paperback)
040			_aWWBK _beng _erda
099			_a973 _bAND
100	1		_aAndersen, Kurt, _d1954-, _eauthor. _912746
245	1	0	_aFantasyland : _bhow America went haywire : a 500-year history / _cKurt Andersen.
246	3	3	_aFantasy land.
264		1	_aLondon : _bEbury Press, _c2018.
264		4	_c©2017.
300			_axi, 462 pages ; _c24 cm.
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent.
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia.
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier.
500			_aIncludes index.
520			_aIn 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and then more quickly in the last several decades, the American invent-your-own-reality legacy of the Enlightenment superseded its more sober, rational, and empirical parts.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.
650		0	_aNational characteristics, American. _99415
650		0	_aPopular culture _zUnited States _xHistory. _912747
651		0	_aUnited States _xCivilization. _99418
907			_a.b55637206 _lp _c-
902			_a180705
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999			_c24925 _d24925