Kurt Andersen

“Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking Of America: A Recent History” (2020)

Americans Have Disabled The Government's Ability To Solve Even Basic Problems, Making Us Vulnerable To The Most Dangerous Demagogue Ever To Pretend To The White House. Kurt Andersen Shows How The Masterminds Of The Economic Right Rode An Unprecedented Wave Of Nostalgia By Dressing Up Their Harsh New Rich-get-richer System In Patriotic Old-time Drag, Making It Their Mission To Take Over The Government For Their Purposes Alone And Convincing The Country That The Mid-century Consensus About The Function Of The American Government Was All Wrong. Only A Writer With Andersen's Crackling Energy, Deep Intelligence, And Ability To See Complex Systems With Clarity Could Make Such A Vital Book Both Intellectually Formidable And Completely Entertaining. In His Diagnosis Of What Happened And What It Means For Us Today, Andersen Spares No One, Committing To A Pinpointing Of His Own Boomer Generation As Accessories To The Great Dismantling Of The American Experiment--

“Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History” (2017)

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 O’Donnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is 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 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 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 fantasies—every 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 America’s 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 book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in the age of Trump.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci

“True Believers: A Novel” (2013)

“Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America” (2009)

“The Real Thing” (2008)