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Fantasyland
- How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
- Narrated by: Kurt Andersen
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
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Publisher's summary
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. 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.
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 60s, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials - our peculiar love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. 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.
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. Little by little, and then more quickly in the last several decades, the American invent-your-own-reality legacy of the Enlightenment superseded its more sober, rational, and empirical parts. We gave ourselves over to all manner of crackpot ideas and make-believe lifestyles designed to console or thrill or terrify us. In Fantasyland, Andersen brilliantly connects the dots that define this condition, portrays its scale and scope, and offers a fresh, bracing explanation of how our American journey has deposited us here.
Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand the politics and culture of 21st-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must listen to this book.
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Come on dude
- By Ryan Bailey on 10-04-17
By: Ta-Nehisi Coates
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The Intimate City
- Walking New York
- By: Michael Kimmelman
- Narrated by: Michael Kimmelman, William DeMeritt, Karen Murray, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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As New York came to a halt with COVID, Michael Kimmelman composed an email to a group of architects, historians, writers, and friends, inviting them to take a walk. Wherever they liked, he wrote—preferably someplace meaningful to them, someplace that illuminated the city and what they loved about it. At first, the goal was distraction. At a scary moment when everything seemed uncertain, walking around New York served as a reminder of all the ways the city was still a rock, joy, and inspiration.
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Excellent Book. Flawed audiobook presentation
- By Peter Frishauf on 01-04-23
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Pure Invention
- How Japan's Pop Culture Conquered the World
- By: Matt Alt
- Narrated by: Matt Alt
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Japan is the forge of the world’s fantasies: karaoke and the Walkman, manga and anime, Pac-Man and Pokémon, online imageboards and emojis. But as Japan media veteran Matt Alt proves in this brilliant investigation, these novelties did more than entertain. They paved the way for our perplexing modern lives.
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great book ruined by ending
- By Grant Holder on 06-07-22
By: Matt Alt
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Bachelor Nation
- Inside the World of America's Favorite Guilty Pleasure
- By: Amy Kaufman
- Narrated by: Amy Kaufman
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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For 15 years and 35 seasons, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers' lives. Since it premiered in 2002, the show's popularity and relevance has only grown - more than eight million viewers tuned in to see the conclusion of the most recent season of The Bachelor. The iconic reality television show's reach and influence into the cultural zeitgeist is undeniable. Bachelor Nation is the first behind-the-scenes, unauthorized look into the reality television phenomenon.
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So disappointing!!!
- By Ashton T. on 03-15-18
By: Amy Kaufman
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The American Political Tradition
- And the Men Who Made It
- By: Richard Hofstadter, Christopher Lasch - foreword
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 17 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The American Political Tradition is one of the most influential and widely read historical volumes of our time. First published in 1948, its elegance, passion, and iconoclastic erudition laid the groundwork for a totally new understanding of the American past. By writing a "kind of intellectual history of the assumptions behind American politics", Richard Hofstadter changed the way Americans understand the relationship between power and ideas in their national experience. Hofstadter was able to articulate, in a single work, a historical vision that inspired and shaped an entire generation.
By: Richard Hofstadter, and others
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Reality Is Not What It Seems
- The Journey to Quantum Gravity
- By: Carlo Rovelli, Simon Carnell - translator, Erica Segre - translator
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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From the New York Times best-selling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, a closer look at the mind-bending nature of the Universe. What are the elementary ingredients of the world? Do time and space exist? And what exactly is reality? Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli has spent his life exploring these questions. He tells us how our understanding of reality has changed over the centuries and how physicists think about the structure of the Universe today.
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Most compelling physics book in at least 10 years!
- By Kyle on 02-03-17
By: Carlo Rovelli, and others
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Gory Details
- By: Erika Engelhaupt
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Filled to the brim with far-out facts, this wickedly informative narrative from the author of National Geographic's popular Gory Details blog takes us on a fascinating journey through an astonishing new reality. Blending humor and journalism in the tradition of Mary Roach, acclaimed science reporter Erika Engelhaupt investigates the gross, strange, and morbid absurdities of our bodies and our universe.
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Feels like old school Discovery channel
- By Anonymous User on 02-15-23
By: Erika Engelhaupt
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Around the World in 80 Books
- By: David Damrosch
- Narrated by: David Damrosch
- Length: 12 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Inspired by Jules Verne’s hero Phileas Fogg, David Damrosch, chair of Harvard University’s department of comparative literature and founder of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, set out to counter a pandemic’s restrictions on travel by exploring 80 exceptional books from around the globe.
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What a fantastic book!
- By Sarah on 01-21-23
By: David Damrosch
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Exercised
- Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding
- By: Daniel Lieberman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In this myth-busting book, Daniel Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a pioneering researcher on the evolution of human physical activity, tells the story of how we never evolved to exercise - to do voluntary physical activity for the sake of health. Using his own research and experiences throughout the world, Lieberman recounts without jargon how and why humans evolved to walk, run, dig, and do other necessary and rewarding physical activities while avoiding needless exertion.
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Chock Full of Cherrypicking and Contradiction
- By Jessica Rosazza on 03-25-21
By: Daniel Lieberman
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Inferior
- How Science Got Women Wrong - and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story
- By: Angela Saini
- Narrated by: Hannah Melbourn
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Whether looking at intelligence or emotion, cognition or behavior, science has continued to tell us that men and women are fundamentally different. Biologists claim that women are better suited to raising families or are, more gently, uniquely empathetic. Men, on the other hand, continue to be described as excelling at tasks that require logic, spatial reasoning, and motor skills. But a huge wave of research is now revealing an alternative version of what we thought we knew.
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Amazing
- By natalie cannon on 01-23-18
By: Angela Saini
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The Shaping of Us
- How Everyday Spaces Structure Our Lives, Behaviour, and Well-Being
- By: Lily Bernheimer
- Narrated by: Beth Frieden
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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What makes everyday spaces work, how do they shape us, and what do they say about us? The spaces we live in - whether public areas, housing, offices, hospitals or cities - mediate community, creativity and our very identity, making us who we are. Using insights from environmental psychology, design, and architecture, The Shaping of Us reveals the often imperceptible ways in which our surroundings influence our behaviour.
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Opened a new door
- By Rebecca Hallqvist on 08-28-18
By: Lily Bernheimer
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Zucked
- Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe
- By: Roger McNamee
- Narrated by: Roger McNamee
- Length: 12 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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The New York Times best seller about a noted tech venture capitalist, early mentor to Mark Zuckerberg, and Facebook investor, who wakes up to the serious damage Facebook is doing to our society—and sets out to try to stop it.
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Important story made almost unbearable
- By vince on 03-14-19
By: Roger McNamee
What listeners say about Fantasyland
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Barry Issberner
- 10-27-17
Very entertaining but a bit pretentious
Love the logic, pacing, storylines. Hate that the author keeps selecting the most complex language possible to explain a simple concept.
Warning that the author is clearly an atheist and highly dismissive of any religious “fantasy”. I get it - you’re a man of science and must be right - but it gets old.
Regardless I am recommending this entertaining book.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Midwest Grandpa
- 08-17-21
Worth every minute!
And worth a second read/listen. Incredible but very credible & essential synthesis. The author's excellent reading made all the difference.
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1 person found this helpful
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- pc
- 07-30-18
Provocative, Nuanced and Absorbing
This is a fascinating book. Andersen's research and deft discussion of history within his interesting thesis is extraordinarily well done. The sheer amount of evidence he provides and how well it's interwoven is persuasive. He's also an excellent reader of his own work and is quite sensitive to which words require emphasis to land a point. There were sections (particularly the chapters covering the 1960's) that I couldn't stop listening to they were written and performed so well.
Readers familiar with Andersen's history with Trump (dating back to Spy Magazine) may find a surprising dearth of material here. Although the evolution of political parties is discussed and so is the President, this book is concerned with how fantasy and/or self-delusion are involved with them more than writing about them. A substantial chapter toward the end discusses the Trump presidency and 2016 election in an interesting way.
I put off listening to this for a while because of the length and a lack of certainty and am sorry that I did. Fantasyland made me focus on our culture with a sensitivity I had neglected for some time. More than worthwhile.
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1 person found this helpful
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- JR
- 08-09-18
Explains a lot!
A fascinating explanation of how present circumstances developed, supported with evidence. Read in eloquent fashion and delivered with aplomb. Engaging and bingeable. Thoroughly enjoyable!
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- Gregory D. Rothbard
- 01-16-18
fantasy land alive and well
making sense of a world gone slanted, Kurt Andersen provides a foothold on our now.
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- John Simon
- 10-11-17
Everyone and Anyone
A must read for the global citizen and inner child in all of us, so share this book with everyone and anyone.
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- ultrajones
- 03-01-18
Fantastic
should be taught in schools and
should be required reading for all Americans thank you good night
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-25-17
Explains so much.
It has made dealing with daily crazy so much easier. By seeing that these beliefs happen slowly, gives me hope, we can chamge it back slowly.
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Overall
- Tannon
- 11-22-17
Thought provoking and eye opening.
Not only does the book highlight the magical thinking that has help create modern America, but challenges us to confront our own fantastic views.
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- LWS
- 11-28-17
Well thought out and explained.
A love letter to a ex that abused you but you still love intensely. America has been a fantasy prone place since it's inception.
Very enjoyable listen.
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