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Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire

A razor-sharp thinker offers a groundbreaking and influential new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots and fantasists of every stripe . . . to Donald Trump.

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.

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.

Watch Kurt in conversation about Fantasyland with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg:

The cover story of September's The Atlantic was an excerpt from Fantasyland—the case it makes for how the great cultural shifts of the 1960s accelerated America's trajectory toward "alternative facts" and President Trump.

Listen to the first few minutes of Kurt reading the audio book of Fantasyland.

 
Fantasyland Quotes

"A stunning, sweeping explanation of how we got to Trump. The most important book that I have read this year."

Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word, MSNBC

"A great revisionist history of America."

Hannah Rosin, Sunday New York Times Book Review

“Fantasyland presents the very best kind of idea—one that, in retrospect, seems obvious, but that took a seer like Kurt Andersen to piece together. The thinking and the writing are both dazzling; it’s an absolute joy to read and will leave your brain dancing with excitement long after you’re done.”

Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakanomics

"The book is not addressed to an academic audience—and so much the better. It is written with gusto; it is very funny; and it succeeds in ridiculing hogwash, past and present. Andersen writes as a modern Mencken: no pity for the 'booboisie,' no sympathy for religious claptrap, no holds barred in combatting political piffle."

Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books

“This is an important book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in the age of Trump. It’s an eye-opening history filled with brilliant insights..."

Walter Isaacson, author of The Innovators, Steve Jobs, and Benjamin Franklin​

“Kurt Andersen is America’s voice of reason. What is he—Canadian? Reality-based citizens will still get a kick out of this winning romp through centuries of American delusion.”

Sarah Vowell, author of The Wordy Shipmates and Assassination Vacation

"Necessary reading...frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline."

The Observer (London)

​"Kurt Andersen is a dazzling writer. This is a blockbuster of book. Take a deep breath and dive in."

Tom Brokaw

​“If you’re trying to get a handle on how we landed in a pile of Trump, Fantasyland offers a clear, persuasive historical framework” in “prose that’s lucid, supple, and powered by paradox.”

The Boston Globe

"I've never read a history book that's as insightful and at the same time as funny as this one."

Steven Johnson, author of How We Got to Now and Everything Bad is Good for You

"It's a really great book. I'm grateful for it. It's an important book. This should be required reading."

Marc Maron, WTF

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