NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Andersen traces the historical roots of what he calls the American obsession with defying reality. He provides a myriad of examples—from the magical thinking of religious founders who believed Satan walked among us to the marvels of the circus and carnival worlds and the contemporary political fantasies that got Donald Trump elected president. As narrator, Andersen owns the prose. He moves through the audiobook effectively, with a strong projection that at times communicates his frustration with the nation’s moves away from reality-based living. Overall, his lightly throaty timbre holds the listener’s attention. Though the production has a handful of vocal shifts indicating that retakes were necessary, his engaging energy makes listening enjoyable. L.E. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
The New York Times Book Review - Hanna Rosin
Reading a great revisionist history of America is the bookish way to feel what it's like to be born again. Suddenly past, present and future are connected by a visible thread. Stray details and aberrations start to make sense. You feel ashamed, but also enlightened, because at least you have named the sin: You belong to a nation of bloodthirsty colonizers (Howard Zinn), or anti-intellectuals (Richard Hofstadter) or, in Kurt Andersen's latest opus, a people who have committed themselves over the last half century to florid, collective delusion.
From the Publisher
With this rousing book, [Kurt] Andersen proves to be the kind of clear-eyed critic an anxious country needs in the midst of a national crisis.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“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
“A spirited, often entertaining rant against things as they are.”—Kirkus Reviews
“A provocative new study of America’s cultural history . . . In this absorbing, must-read polemic, Andersen exhaustively chronicles a development eating away at the very foundation of Americanism.”—Newsday
“Andersen exhaustively explores with wit and extensive research.”—HuffPost
“A staggering amount of research that’s both compelling and totally unnerving.”—The Village Voice
“A stunning, sweeping explanation of how we got to Trump . . . the most important book that I have read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell, MSNBC
“This is a blockbuster of a book. Kurt Andersen is a dazzling writer and a perceptive student of the many layers of American life. Take a deep breath and dive in.”—Tom Brokaw
“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, a saga of how we were always susceptible to fantasy, from the Puritan fanatics to the talk-radio and Internet wackos who mix show business, hucksterism, and conspiracy theories. Even the parts you think you know already are put into an eye-opening context.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci
“Kurt Andersen is America’s voice of reason. What is he—Canadian? The people who should read this book won’t—because it’s a book—but reality-based citizens will still get a kick out of this winning romp through centuries of American delusion.”—Sarah Vowell
“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 is at once a history lesson and an oh-so-modern cri de coeur; it’s an absolute joy to read and will leave your brain dancing with excitement long after you’re done.”—Stephen Dubner
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2017
Andersen (True Believers) interprets American history, beginning with the Puritans, in part as a myth-driven, religiously fundamental mental, antiscientific engine that ultimately paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump. According to the author, the 18th century's "First Great Delirium" ushered in utopian fantasies, religious and supernatural cults, and spurious medical treatments, which resurfaced with a vengeance with the 1960s counterculture and continues unabated. In the 21st century, the Internet fuels the "fantasy-industrial complex," which has made entertainment the force behind pop culture, the media, and politics. Trump's appeal, claims Andersen, is his skill at invoking American myths of greatness and opportunity, historically limited to mostly wealthy, white males. He asserts that the president has become the leader of the United States of Fantasyland, with his reality TV and Art of the Deal credentials. Andersen's spirited, thought-provoking narrative provides a compelling view of the current polarized state of U.S. politics, although the author holds out some hope that Fantasyland has peaked with the Trump administration. VERDICT This engaging work will find a wide and appreciative audience among general readers and scholars alike. [See the author Q&A on p. 130.—Ed.]—Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile
Andersen traces the historical roots of what he calls the American obsession with defying reality. He provides a myriad of examples—from the magical thinking of religious founders who believed Satan walked among us to the marvels of the circus and carnival worlds and the contemporary political fantasies that got Donald Trump elected president. As narrator, Andersen owns the prose. He moves through the audiobook effectively, with a strong projection that at times communicates his frustration with the nation’s moves away from reality-based living. Overall, his lightly throaty timbre holds the listener’s attention. Though the production has a handful of vocal shifts indicating that retakes were necessary, his engaging energy makes listening enjoyable. L.E. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-06-15
When did Americans come to shun reality? When did the American experiment become a congeries of solipsisms?"As I pass by fish in barrels," writes Studio 360 host Andersen (True Believers, 2012, etc.) at the outset of this entertaining tour of American irreality, "I will often shoot them." Indeed he does, but then, as writers as various as H.L. Mencken and Christopher Hitchens long ago discovered, American society offers endless targets. Andersen finds a climacteric in Karl Rove's pronouncement, a dozen years ago, that those people who live in "the reality-based community" need to understand that "that's not the way the world really works anymore." True enough: Andersen closes with the rise of Trump-ism and its "critical mass of fantasy and lies" that is in danger of becoming "something much worse than nasty, oafish, reality-show pseudoconservatism." It's not just the Trumpies who are ruining things for everyone; by the author's account, the nice liberals who refuse to vaccinate their children are as much a part of the problem as those who flock to creation museums and megachurches. All are waystations of Andersen's "Fantasyland," an assemblage not just of scattered false beliefs, but whole lifestyles cobbled from them, which lands us in the 1960s and its ethos: "Do your own thing, find your own reality, it's all relative." It's not, but that's where we are today, at least by Andersen's account, though he hastens to add that approving nods to political correctness are not necessarily the same thing as endorsing perniciousness. Throughout, the author names names—Dr. Oz, for one, won't be happy, and neither will Oprah—and takes no prisoners, offering incitement for the rest of us to do the same. "We need to become less squishy," Andersen writes, and instead gird up for some reality-based arguments against the "dangerously untrue and unreal." A spirited, often entertaining rant against things as they are.
