Evil Geniuses

The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

By: Kurt Andersen

Narrated by: Kurt Andersen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • When did America give up on fairness? The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change—and charts a way back to the future.

“Essential, absorbing . . . a graceful, authoritative guide . . . a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change.”—The New York Times Book Review

During the twentieth century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.

Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America’s undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame—to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal “useful idiots,” among whom he includes himself.

Only a writer with Andersen’s crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point, and show the way out of this man-made disaster.

Critic reviews

“This is the one book everyone must read as we figure out how to rebuild our country. With lucid writing and head-snapping insights, Kurt Andersen explores how a confederacy of the right and big business, with unabashed greed, deliberately reengineered our economy. To fix that will require understanding the roots of the problem. A triumph.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

“Nostalgia is the antithesis of history. Andersen brilliantly exposes how nostalgia—the strategic oversimplification of our past—has erased complexity and friction from our country’s narrative to serve a single goal: to preserve the status quo for the benefit of those in power. Evil Geniuses documents how history and nostalgia are engaged in hand-to-hand combat that may determine our future.”—Ken Burns, director of The Civil War and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

“How did the United States turn from its longstanding egalitarian ideals to its present course of socially and morally catastrophic inequality? Kurt Andersen interrogates the past half century with characteristic intellectual ambition and literary bravado to find out. At once cultural history, memoir, and riff, Evil Geniuses explains how our country found its way into this predicament, and how we might yet get out of it.”—Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy and Ronald Reagan

“Evil Geniuses is a vivid catalog of American sociopolitical history—a dedicated deep dive into this country’s paradoxical legacy of innovation and ego, with Andersen as its clear-eyed, masterful archivist.”—Rebecca Carroll, WNYC cultural critic and host of the podcast Come Through

“Back when the idea of President Reagan still seemed a stretch and President Trump was barely a joke, some serious, smart, committed people with vast appetites and little shame—right-wing intellectuals and billionaires, CEOs and Washington hustlers—launched a long war to create a paradigm shift and rewrite our social contract to their benefit. Andersen’s dazzling, mind-bending, must-read chronicle of that fifty-year crusade explains how it happened, why it succeeded, and, unsettlingly, what that victory means: America is now theirs.”—John Heilemann, co-founder and executive editor, The Recount

“Wow. Evil Geniuses is engaging, enraging, enthralling, appalling; a true tour de force. And most of all, it’s the truth—about how these rapacious bastards have picked this country’s bones for the last fifty years, and what the rest of us need to do to turn the tables. Exactly the book we need right now.”—Michael Tomasky, Daily Beast columnist and author of If We Can Keep It

Everyone should listen to Kurt Andersen

There are only a few Good Geniuses like Kurt Andersen around. Not only does he have enormous academic and intellectual credibility, he has the street cred to go with it. Don't be scared... he's from the Midwest. Lots of quotations, research, and statistics to back him up. This book will make clear that most Americans are on the same page; whereas our government has become a tool of big business (the Evil Geniuses). Very well written too, and quite entertaining. Kurt Andersen for presidential advisor!

How conservatives and big business conned us.

Anderson lays out in fascinating detail all of the steps in the rise of modern "conservative," small govt America. It's a chilling narrative that connects the dots and shows how, little by little, conservatives and corporatists flushed a half century of post-New Deal prosperity down the toilet for all but the upper echelons of our society.

comprehensive

loved it. eye opening and distressing. we have a lot of work ahead of us. might move to Finland or Denmark.

A history reminder all Americans need to read

Memories are short, things easily forgotten and much much more hidden from view of the public.

Great book, both in hardcover and audible versions

This very persuasively written book (I am a Kurt Andersen fan) was a good listen. It lags a bit, but chapter 19 and onward are very good places to restart thus audible book.