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The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the popular will―are iat war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."
This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.
By legitimizing bigotry and redefining so-called American values, a revived Klan in the 1920s left a toxic legacy that demands reexamination today. Boasting four to six million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South.
When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
Just as Donald Trump's victorious campaign for the US presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious "alt-right" figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black US president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork.
A razor-sharp thinker offers a 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 of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.
The world is in turmoil. From India to Turkey and from Poland to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result democracy itself may now be at risk. Two core components of liberal democracy―individual rights and the popular will―are iat war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create a system of "democracy without rights."
This groundbreaking book from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Frances FitzGerald is the first to tell the powerful, dramatic story of the Evangelical movement in America - from the Puritan era to the 2016 presidential election. Evangelicals have, in many ways, defined the nation. They have shaped our culture and our politics. Frances FitzGerald's narrative of this distinctively American movement is a major work of history, piecing together the centuries-long story for the first time.
By legitimizing bigotry and redefining so-called American values, a revived Klan in the 1920s left a toxic legacy that demands reexamination today. Boasting four to six million members, the reassembled Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s dramatically challenged our preconceptions of hooded Klansmen, who through violence and lynching had established a Jim Crow racial hierarchy in the 1870s South.
When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.
Just as Donald Trump's victorious campaign for the US presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious "alt-right" figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black US president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork.
A razor-sharp thinker offers a 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 of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.
Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working-class kids and the white-collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs, and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn't start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn't have the word classic in mind as the cameras were rolling.
Appalachia - among the most storied and yet least understood regions in America - has long been associated with poverty and backwardness. But how did this image arise, and what exactly does it mean? In Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll launches an original investigation into the history of Appalachia and its place in US history, with a special emphasis on how generations of its inhabitants lived, worked, survived, and depended on natural resources held in common.
Recent years have seen a revival of the heated culture wars of the 1990s, but this time its battleground is the Internet. On one side the alt-right ranges from the once obscure neo-reactionary and white separatist movements, to geeky subcultures like 4chan, to more mainstream manifestations such as the Trump-supporting gay libertarian Milo Yiannopolous. On the other side, struggle sessions and virtue signaling lurk behind a therapeutic language of trigger warnings and safe spaces. The feminist side of the online culture wars has its equally geeky subcultures.
Russia expert Luke Harding lays out the most in-depth look to date at the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia. Beginning with a meeting with Christopher Steele, the man behind the shattering dossier that first brought the allegations to light, Harding probes the histories of key Russian and American players with striking clarity and insight. Harding exposes the disquieting details of the Trump-Russia story - a saga so huge it involves international espionage, offshore banks, sketchy real estate deals, mobsters, money laundering, disappeared dissidents, and more.
With extraordinary access to the West Wing, Michael Wolff reveals what happened behind-the-scenes in the first nine months of the most controversial presidency of our time in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House. Since Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, the country—and the world—has witnessed a stormy, outrageous, and absolutely mesmerizing presidential term that reflects the volatility and fierceness of the man elected Commander-in-Chief.
In the early days of photography, in the death-strewn wake of the Civil War, one man seized America's imagination. A "spirit photographer", William Mumler took portrait photographs that featured the ghostly presence of a lost loved one alongside the living subject. Mumler was a sensation. Peter Manseau brilliantly captures a nation wracked with grief and hungry for proof of the existence of ghosts and for contact with their dead husbands and sons. It took a circus-like trial of Mumler on fraud charges to expose a fault line of doubt and manipulation.
With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy was thought to be absolute. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. But we now know this to be premature. Authoritarianism first returned in Russia, as Putin developed a political system dedicated solely to the consolidation and exercise of power. In the last six years, it has creeped from east to west as nationalism inflames Europe, abetted by Russian propaganda and cyberwarfare.
In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation. She conjures up early operating theaters - no place for the squeamish - and surgeons, working before anesthesia, who were lauded for their speed and brute strength. They were baffled by the persistent infections that kept mortality rates stubbornly high. A young, melancholy Quaker surgeon named Joseph Lister would solve the deadly riddle and change the course of history.
The incredible, harrowing account of how American democracy was hacked by Moscow as part of a covert operation to influence the US election and help Donald Trump gain the presidency.
In this gripping narrative history, Laura Spinney traces the overlooked pandemic to reveal how the virus travelled across the globe, exposing mankind's vulnerability and putting our ingenuity to the test. As socially significant as both world wars, the Spanish flu dramatically disrupted - and often permanently altered - global politics, race relations, and family structures while spurring innovation in medicine, religion, and the arts.
Donald Trump isn't a despot. But he is increasingly acting like the "despot's apprentice", an understudy in authoritarian tactics that threaten to erode American democracy, including attacking the press, threatening rule of law by firing those who investigate his alleged wrongdoings, using nepotism to staff the White House, and countless other techniques. Donald Trump is borrowing tactics from the world's dictators and despots.
In The Gifted Generation, historian David Goldfield examines the generation immediately after World War II and argues that the federal government was instrumental in the great economic, social, and environmental progress of the era. Following the sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the returning vets and their children took the unprecedented economic growth and federal activism to new heights. This generation was led by presidents who believed that federal legislation, by encouraging individual opportunity, would help the entire nation.
Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African-American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution.
Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of "truthiness" where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
The subject matter Is one of great interest to me. However, the narration is very difficult to follow. The narration detracts from the book and subject. If I had to do this over I would read the book.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful
The subject matter is fascinating and well researched. Several interesting points and analogies are made.
However, and I truly can't tell if it's the narrator (who is awful) or the writing - but I'm finding it impossible to follow or stay focused when listening.
If you're interested in this subject by all means READ the book.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful
I pre-ordered this book the day I heard Kevin Young speak at the Texas Book Festival. I should have waited to hear the sample, first. Young himself was engaging and interesting, but the reader here sounds dry and stuffy. It was a chore to listen to this one and I'm sorry I did not get the Kindle version instead. I think I would have rated this book more highly if it had had a different reader.
The content is interesting. I knew about many of the hoaxes Young examines in the book, but had never made the connections he makes here - that many hoaxes revolve around race or bigotry and stereotypes. Some hoaxes have obvious victims, but others are less obvious until examined in the lens of the harmful negative stereotypes hoaxes often push on society.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
Although I don't agree with a lot of the arguments about the parallels of some of the hoaxes story and the parties involved whereby the story (subject) of the hoaxes imitates the story of the hoaxer, especially with some of the case being made in the 'negative space', namely not what is said but what is not, that this parallel can be drawn is interesting. Further the analysis in places feels lengthy, and although all ways considered and insightful, the depth occasionally does seem excessive, and one looses track of all that is outlined. Clearly this is at least partially due to the 'audio' rather than book, for myself.
Great, interesting stories which give an interesting twist on Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland, not in that it gives a different perspective, but an in-depth analysis of the public fraud for fraud's sake rather than the deliberate deception and acceptance thereof.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
This is not a book. This is a 20 hour Racial Studies dissertation. It’s a good dissertation, with engaging narratives, colorful exposition, and strong analytical arguments, but it definitely reads more like a graduate school research paper run amuck than a piece of prose.
Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
This was a pretty good book... the stories are hit or miss. I enjoyed some immensely... others not as much.
Which character – as performed by Mirron Willis – was your favorite?
Characters were all done well... none in particular stand out. Competent narrator.
What character would you cut from Bunk?
I could not bear to listen to this. The narrator was positively the worst I have encountered in years with Audible. I couldn't finish it. This has never happened before. What a waste of a credit.
Any additional comments?
The overarching point of this book is this: American culture is full of stories of fakes and frauds, and it is also always, overtly or covertly, dealing with issues of race. Unsurprisingly, then, instances of fraud and fakery are frequently about race in some way. Indeed, the idea of race may be the biggest piece of bunk of all.
This is all fine, but it is not news to anyone who is familiar with academic work in American Studies of the last forty years -- from which this book borrows heavily. And a listener might be forgiven for thinking this was an academic book -- if only because of its stuffy, pretentious writing style. But the similarity to an academic work of cultural history ends there. This book jumps around maddeningly from one instance of trickery to another, and between the US and England, and the 18th century to 21st--all without contextualization or justification. It hints that the reader will get some historical context for fake news and so forth, but aside from a couple of allusions to reality TV, it doesn't offer enough of a coherent argument to shed light on our contemporary moment. The subject matter is so rich that this alone should be enough to sustain a listener's attention, but sadly, it didn't even do that for me.
I waded thru this book waiting to find something note worthy. The author blames all the things listed on the front cover all fall to racism. Two thirds of the way thru the book I looked up the author. It seems that racism is his major authoring theme. Granedt there were a few ( very few) good and correct points, however to blame racism for everything instead of personal responsibility is very myopic.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful