Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year.Lawrence ODonnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that whats happening in our country todaythis post-factual, fake news moment were all living throughis not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Over the course of five centuriesfrom 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 extraterrestrialsour love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasiesevery citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. 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. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the 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. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE This is a blockbuster of a book. Take a deep breath and dive in.Tom Brokaw [An] absorbing, must-read polemic . . . a provocative new study of Americas cultural history.Newsday Compelling and totally unnerving.The Village Voice A frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards.The Guardian This is an important bookthe indispensable bookfor understanding America in the age of Trump.Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci