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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
My first audiobook!
Perhaps starting with a heavier nonfiction book was not the way to go. I think I went in expecting more specific in-depth explorations of historical fantasies like the satanic panic. And I did get that - those were the parts of the book I enjoyed the most. But there were parts of the book I couldn't get into as much, including breakdowns of religious sects.
Or maybe I'm just resentful, as someone who suffers from "Kids-R-Us Syndrome," as Andersen puts it. I'm on the verge of turning 30, and I'm struggling to define what it means to be an adult. Can adults not have hobbies like cosplay, or fantasy literature? Must adults be super serious? The idea that adults used to be less "childlike" feels like just another form of the fantastical nostalgia that Andersen talks about throughout the book, pining for the bygone days when things were better.
Moreover, the majority of the conspiracy believers are from groups of people who want to go back to the bygone days where adulthood was a staunch institution, so that seems a tenuous connection at best. To me, that's where parts of Andersen's argument fail. Indulging in fantasy with the knowledge that it is unreal, and living in it full time have certainly become intertwined, but I'm hesitant to blame it on some sense of perpetual childhood. Aside from that, he makes many important points and marks eras that have led us to where we are. In general, a good read with a lot of great information.
Perhaps starting with a heavier nonfiction book was not the way to go. I think I went in expecting more specific in-depth explorations of historical fantasies like the satanic panic. And I did get that - those were the parts of the book I enjoyed the most. But there were parts of the book I couldn't get into as much, including breakdowns of religious sects.
Or maybe I'm just resentful, as someone who suffers from "Kids-R-Us Syndrome," as Andersen puts it. I'm on the verge of turning 30, and I'm struggling to define what it means to be an adult. Can adults not have hobbies like cosplay, or fantasy literature? Must adults be super serious? The idea that adults used to be less "childlike" feels like just another form of the fantastical nostalgia that Andersen talks about throughout the book, pining for the bygone days when things were better.
Moreover, the majority of the conspiracy believers are from groups of people who want to go back to the bygone days where adulthood was a staunch institution, so that seems a tenuous connection at best. To me, that's where parts of Andersen's argument fail. Indulging in fantasy with the knowledge that it is unreal, and living in it full time have certainly become intertwined, but I'm hesitant to blame it on some sense of perpetual childhood. Aside from that, he makes many important points and marks eras that have led us to where we are. In general, a good read with a lot of great information.
This is legitimately one of the worst books I've ever read in my entire life and you all need to explain just what are you doing giving this well over a 4.0 here on Goodreads. It deserves a one star, nothing more. And keep in mind I'm a very liberal person - but I'll get into more on that.
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire a 500 Year History is pure, utter dreck and garbage (and should be treated as such) from its "well lets not invest too many folios on this dust jacket" front cover (perhaps the wisest thing publisher Penguin Random House did, though they could've gone one step further and just moved the original manuscript submission into the recycling folder) to the overly smug, faux-concerned look on Kurt Anderson's face on the back. In trying to "explain" everything that went wrong to get Trump elected President, Anderson has done almost nothing but to commit the exact same sins made not only the President but his entire support base, particularly in the not just one but two almost pure propaganda networks Trump gets to enjoy at his virtual command. Although professing to be very liberal both in apparent implication and in blatant exposition throughout Fantasyland reads exactly like any given screed on any random faux-indignity-of-the-day from FOX News or FOX "Business" News, just switching around the order of how the words "Trump" and "liberals" appear. But that hardly hides how this book, Anderson and the "FAUX" News Networks share common ground in occupying a land of complete and absolute intellectual bankruptcy.
While this book makes some good points, particularly on the very real concerns of urban sprawl, gun control, science denial and general extremism (more on those points later, actually), it's largely nothing more but a nearly 450-page long screed against popular culture, an exhibition on personal bias, and yes even some poor writing choices (if I have to see paragraphs in consecutive chapters open up with "when I was a kid" ever again I'm throwing this copy at Anderson's big fat ego-inflated head). The attacks on pop culture and entertainment are particularly disturbing considering Anderson's own entertainment background - and while you may think this in fact makes him more qualified to attack such institutions, he goes far and above caution and an outright attack on how Americans choose to exercise their freedoms and abilities towards self-expression, hobbies and creativity.
He also goes on to attack:
- contraception and safe sex practices, going so far as to specifically cite this as a major contributor towards the election of Trump (I'm not making this up, this is an actual point he promotes and if you stand by your 4+ rating you should be ashamed of yourself)
- the civil rights movement in broad strokes
- and if his views expressed seem outright Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic, you're right (he doesn't come out and say it, and he even weakly attempts to deflect any accusations of Islamophobia with "I don't talk about Muslims much in my book" - and then immediately goes on an Islamophobic screed), and again if you stand by your 4+ rating you should be ashamed of yourself
In fact he's not afraid to attack literally any religion - except Catholicism to the point where he's fanatically defensive about it above and beyond the point of bias and straight into, well, some sort of Fantasyland he inhabits (it's pretty obvious he's a devout Catholic even when he makes no explicit mention of such). The book opens up with an attack and outright screed against The Reformation - which doesn't particularly bother agnostic little old me, except that the historical ignorance he puts on display here is staggering - a giant red flag for a book where the whole premise is about "correcting" the truth of history and how to steer the nation right again. He attacks America's history for liberally borrowing (or appropriating, if you will) from other cultures - not the appropriation itself but the institutions appropriated (i.e. cosplay is one he bizarrely dwells on) and yet the countries where these cultural hobbies original from are apparently exempt from inhabiting a Fantasyland.
It's apparent literally from the introduction that Andersen is fixated, perhaps even obsessed with, attacking pop culture and creative expression, something that bothered me heavily throughout the book. In this regard he's little different from someone he explicitly names and attacks - Bill Maher.
In trying to walk a "common sense middle ground," he instead (like Maher) walks a no-man's land of complete isolation, of mistaking the middle ground as trying to offend everybody - and in the process, accomplishing nothing. More of where his true ideological extremism lies in his thinly veiled attempt to defend Gawker in the Terry Boiega (Hulk Hogan) lawsuit, an event that turned off even many liberals (especially the exact same moderate liberals Andersen is trying to appeal to) off from Gawker. As for his apparent screeds on creative expressionism, I don't want to get into why creative expression is so important (particularly appalling from someone in the entertainment industry such as Andersen!) but you can watch this video for an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7X-1V9nOs&t=
Of his good points - on urban sprawl, gun control, the anti-vax movement, scientific reactionism related to the anti-vax and GMO reactionism movements, a push to make religious myth mainstream fact (which is surprising given his blatant pro-Catholic bias), racism and cultural appropriation (when he actually addresses it), etc. - at best he's only preaching to a choir and at worst he's doing nothing but using it as another talking point not to discuss it on any intellectually honest or meaningful level (and in fact often with extremely poor or even non-apparent research, just apparent "observation" and opinion) but to play the FOX News anchor sitting comfortably in his desk and doing his best effort to make himself look uncomfortable, screaming about imagined indignities at the top of his lungs. It should be no surprise that among the reviews I quickly Googled, it's getting top hits from foreign sites that, well, let's face it, do enjoy poking fun at American culture and perhaps even giving credence to the FOX News byline about foreign news orgs wanting to blow sand in our faces. Oh, and there are various footnotes that launch into bizarre, nonsensical non-sequiturs. And I don't want to make it seem like I dislike this book just based on Andersen's apparent Catholicism - but such blatant bias not only utterly destroys the very premise of this book, but such bias (in fact all his biases) condemn this book into outright intellectually dishonest and bankrupt territory. This book is, in short, literally worthless.
I'll even go so far as to examine the people quoted in blurbs on the back of the dust jacket - Walter Isaacson who wrote a fairly excellent book titled The Innovators - a book about many people of whom Andersen actually names and attacks here so Isaacson should know better and maybe retract his praise or feel shamed; Sarah Vowell who should probably be particularly interested in retracting her blurb and probably doesn't even know what this book is about because Fantasyland effectively repudiates her seminal Wordy Shipmates, but whatever; and Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics.
And if you're wondering why nothing more needs to be said about Dubner:
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2005/12/01/oops-onomics
https://uncertaintyblog.com/2013/08/15/fooled-again-pinker-puts-a-nail-in-the-coffin-of-the-freakonomics-crime-theory/
Again, I'm a very liberal person. It's just that Fantasyland isn't liberal. It tries the laziest of veneers to appeal to be liberal by taking a FOX News script and transposing any instance of "Trump" and "liberal." It's a screed against just about every American institution imaginable - some justifiably so, some less so, but in doing so it offers either little more than just exactly the type of meaningless ramblings that has truly made America a political Fantasyland at present, or some appalling lack of actual research. Moreover it offers little in the way of solution beyond "quit yet cosplaying you manchildren and grow the eff up" (and if this doesn't sound like a line from Tucker Carlson verbatim, you haven't been paying attention). Granted a solution to the problem of this disturbing political climate is going to be complex and probably no one person can divine it oh wait...
- it's called education. Actual science. Actual, true teaching of history in school.
We have pop culture celebrities (the same one Andersen rails against) such as Demi Lovato promoting the real history of native massacres behind Thanksgiving, greater awareness of cultural appropriation, real efforts to fight homophobia and Islamophobia, I can go on. Trump won by narrow margins, and lost the popular vote. All of this seems lost to Andersen.
The problem, Mr. Andersen (heh), isn't because people are cosplaying or LARPing or reading fantasy books. It's because elements of the Left have become so extreme many people vote for Trump out of sheer spite. That they've been lead to believe that immigrants are stealing jobs to the point where a wall needs to be built. That they've been lead to believe that liberals have left the military in such a sorry state they need to vote for whoever politician promises to fund a single weapons system for the same price as half the school districts in the entire nation.
Fantasyland touches on that...and then just goes off the rails. The biggest problem is that Fantasyland doesn't just commit the exact same sins it rails against. It fully indulges in them. Fantasyland...is Andersen's personal Fantasyland, where he can rise above the rest of the American ilk.
What the REAL purpose of this book is, is just to use his disorganized biased screed to cash-in on the now popular market of what went wrong with America. Well this book isn't helping its cause.
Out of moral obligation no less, but also as a genuine reflection of quality, particularly the actual intellectual quality of this book, I gladly give it 1 out of 5 stars. This book is so abysmal, in fact, that I know refuse to touch any of Andersen's other nonfiction.
If you want something in the political realm that's actually good I suggest you instead read...I dunno, Born a Crime, that was a good book. Or just watch Trever Noah and especially John Oliver. John Oliver does an excellent job presenting his arguments rationally and in a way where his apparent bias has minimal impact and while he obviously shoots for humor at least he isn't screeding and insulting his way through his arguments (and nobody ever said video or even humor is a valid way to get political opinion, and if they did, they are the true definition of an idiot).
I'm glad I'm not the only one who can see through this: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/the-fiction-of-kurt-andersens-fantasyland/
How on Earth can PenRan publish this nonsense garbage?
What the hell ya'll doing giving this book 4+ stars?
UPDATE: and now I see Trevor Noah of all people recommending this as a summer read. Has anybody bothered to read this book at all?
Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire a 500 Year History is pure, utter dreck and garbage (and should be treated as such) from its "well lets not invest too many folios on this dust jacket" front cover (perhaps the wisest thing publisher Penguin Random House did, though they could've gone one step further and just moved the original manuscript submission into the recycling folder) to the overly smug, faux-concerned look on Kurt Anderson's face on the back. In trying to "explain" everything that went wrong to get Trump elected President, Anderson has done almost nothing but to commit the exact same sins made not only the President but his entire support base, particularly in the not just one but two almost pure propaganda networks Trump gets to enjoy at his virtual command. Although professing to be very liberal both in apparent implication and in blatant exposition throughout Fantasyland reads exactly like any given screed on any random faux-indignity-of-the-day from FOX News or FOX "Business" News, just switching around the order of how the words "Trump" and "liberals" appear. But that hardly hides how this book, Anderson and the "FAUX" News Networks share common ground in occupying a land of complete and absolute intellectual bankruptcy.
While this book makes some good points, particularly on the very real concerns of urban sprawl, gun control, science denial and general extremism (more on those points later, actually), it's largely nothing more but a nearly 450-page long screed against popular culture, an exhibition on personal bias, and yes even some poor writing choices (if I have to see paragraphs in consecutive chapters open up with "when I was a kid" ever again I'm throwing this copy at Anderson's big fat ego-inflated head). The attacks on pop culture and entertainment are particularly disturbing considering Anderson's own entertainment background - and while you may think this in fact makes him more qualified to attack such institutions, he goes far and above caution and an outright attack on how Americans choose to exercise their freedoms and abilities towards self-expression, hobbies and creativity.
He also goes on to attack:
- contraception and safe sex practices, going so far as to specifically cite this as a major contributor towards the election of Trump (I'm not making this up, this is an actual point he promotes and if you stand by your 4+ rating you should be ashamed of yourself)
- the civil rights movement in broad strokes
- and if his views expressed seem outright Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic, you're right (he doesn't come out and say it, and he even weakly attempts to deflect any accusations of Islamophobia with "I don't talk about Muslims much in my book" - and then immediately goes on an Islamophobic screed), and again if you stand by your 4+ rating you should be ashamed of yourself
In fact he's not afraid to attack literally any religion - except Catholicism to the point where he's fanatically defensive about it above and beyond the point of bias and straight into, well, some sort of Fantasyland he inhabits (it's pretty obvious he's a devout Catholic even when he makes no explicit mention of such). The book opens up with an attack and outright screed against The Reformation - which doesn't particularly bother agnostic little old me, except that the historical ignorance he puts on display here is staggering - a giant red flag for a book where the whole premise is about "correcting" the truth of history and how to steer the nation right again. He attacks America's history for liberally borrowing (or appropriating, if you will) from other cultures - not the appropriation itself but the institutions appropriated (i.e. cosplay is one he bizarrely dwells on) and yet the countries where these cultural hobbies original from are apparently exempt from inhabiting a Fantasyland.
It's apparent literally from the introduction that Andersen is fixated, perhaps even obsessed with, attacking pop culture and creative expression, something that bothered me heavily throughout the book. In this regard he's little different from someone he explicitly names and attacks - Bill Maher.
In trying to walk a "common sense middle ground," he instead (like Maher) walks a no-man's land of complete isolation, of mistaking the middle ground as trying to offend everybody - and in the process, accomplishing nothing. More of where his true ideological extremism lies in his thinly veiled attempt to defend Gawker in the Terry Boiega (Hulk Hogan) lawsuit, an event that turned off even many liberals (especially the exact same moderate liberals Andersen is trying to appeal to) off from Gawker. As for his apparent screeds on creative expressionism, I don't want to get into why creative expression is so important (particularly appalling from someone in the entertainment industry such as Andersen!) but you can watch this video for an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m7X-1V9nOs&t=
Of his good points - on urban sprawl, gun control, the anti-vax movement, scientific reactionism related to the anti-vax and GMO reactionism movements, a push to make religious myth mainstream fact (which is surprising given his blatant pro-Catholic bias), racism and cultural appropriation (when he actually addresses it), etc. - at best he's only preaching to a choir and at worst he's doing nothing but using it as another talking point not to discuss it on any intellectually honest or meaningful level (and in fact often with extremely poor or even non-apparent research, just apparent "observation" and opinion) but to play the FOX News anchor sitting comfortably in his desk and doing his best effort to make himself look uncomfortable, screaming about imagined indignities at the top of his lungs. It should be no surprise that among the reviews I quickly Googled, it's getting top hits from foreign sites that, well, let's face it, do enjoy poking fun at American culture and perhaps even giving credence to the FOX News byline about foreign news orgs wanting to blow sand in our faces. Oh, and there are various footnotes that launch into bizarre, nonsensical non-sequiturs. And I don't want to make it seem like I dislike this book just based on Andersen's apparent Catholicism - but such blatant bias not only utterly destroys the very premise of this book, but such bias (in fact all his biases) condemn this book into outright intellectually dishonest and bankrupt territory. This book is, in short, literally worthless.
I'll even go so far as to examine the people quoted in blurbs on the back of the dust jacket - Walter Isaacson who wrote a fairly excellent book titled The Innovators - a book about many people of whom Andersen actually names and attacks here so Isaacson should know better and maybe retract his praise or feel shamed; Sarah Vowell who should probably be particularly interested in retracting her blurb and probably doesn't even know what this book is about because Fantasyland effectively repudiates her seminal Wordy Shipmates, but whatever; and Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics.
And if you're wondering why nothing more needs to be said about Dubner:
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2005/12/01/oops-onomics
https://uncertaintyblog.com/2013/08/15/fooled-again-pinker-puts-a-nail-in-the-coffin-of-the-freakonomics-crime-theory/
Again, I'm a very liberal person. It's just that Fantasyland isn't liberal. It tries the laziest of veneers to appeal to be liberal by taking a FOX News script and transposing any instance of "Trump" and "liberal." It's a screed against just about every American institution imaginable - some justifiably so, some less so, but in doing so it offers either little more than just exactly the type of meaningless ramblings that has truly made America a political Fantasyland at present, or some appalling lack of actual research. Moreover it offers little in the way of solution beyond "quit yet cosplaying you manchildren and grow the eff up" (and if this doesn't sound like a line from Tucker Carlson verbatim, you haven't been paying attention). Granted a solution to the problem of this disturbing political climate is going to be complex and probably no one person can divine it oh wait...
- it's called education. Actual science. Actual, true teaching of history in school.
We have pop culture celebrities (the same one Andersen rails against) such as Demi Lovato promoting the real history of native massacres behind Thanksgiving, greater awareness of cultural appropriation, real efforts to fight homophobia and Islamophobia, I can go on. Trump won by narrow margins, and lost the popular vote. All of this seems lost to Andersen.
The problem, Mr. Andersen (heh), isn't because people are cosplaying or LARPing or reading fantasy books. It's because elements of the Left have become so extreme many people vote for Trump out of sheer spite. That they've been lead to believe that immigrants are stealing jobs to the point where a wall needs to be built. That they've been lead to believe that liberals have left the military in such a sorry state they need to vote for whoever politician promises to fund a single weapons system for the same price as half the school districts in the entire nation.
Fantasyland touches on that...and then just goes off the rails. The biggest problem is that Fantasyland doesn't just commit the exact same sins it rails against. It fully indulges in them. Fantasyland...is Andersen's personal Fantasyland, where he can rise above the rest of the American ilk.
What the REAL purpose of this book is, is just to use his disorganized biased screed to cash-in on the now popular market of what went wrong with America. Well this book isn't helping its cause.
Out of moral obligation no less, but also as a genuine reflection of quality, particularly the actual intellectual quality of this book, I gladly give it 1 out of 5 stars. This book is so abysmal, in fact, that I know refuse to touch any of Andersen's other nonfiction.
If you want something in the political realm that's actually good I suggest you instead read...I dunno, Born a Crime, that was a good book. Or just watch Trever Noah and especially John Oliver. John Oliver does an excellent job presenting his arguments rationally and in a way where his apparent bias has minimal impact and while he obviously shoots for humor at least he isn't screeding and insulting his way through his arguments (and nobody ever said video or even humor is a valid way to get political opinion, and if they did, they are the true definition of an idiot).
I'm glad I'm not the only one who can see through this: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/20/the-fiction-of-kurt-andersens-fantasyland/
How on Earth can PenRan publish this nonsense garbage?
What the hell ya'll doing giving this book 4+ stars?
UPDATE: and now I see Trevor Noah of all people recommending this as a summer read. Has anybody bothered to read this book at all?
Good coverage of the history of bullshit in the United States, although the argument that the U.S. has a special susceptibility to bullshit is hampered by a lack of consideration of, and apparent ignorant of, bullshit in other places. It's provocative, in a good way, to see episodes that are often celebrated as instances of American freedom of thought reconsidered as American spewing of nonsense. It is, certainly, a sound enough collection to be pretty discouraging.
challenging
informative
reflective
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
I enjoyed this book, and the premise. It was very relevant to what's happening today. However, I wish that the author had cited more of his sources in text. Also, in quite a few chapters (when he covered the 1960s onwards), he mentioned a lot of personal anecdotes, which weren't really necessary.
Overall, a fascinating read, but like others have mentioned, could use some editing of parts.
Overall, a fascinating read, but like others have mentioned, could use some editing of parts.
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
This book is wild.
The breakdown of an entire nation's history, focused specifically on the delusions that we are weak to and fall for, is not something I thought to find so fascinating- but this book has changed my mind.
This book isn't for anyone who idolizes America or is looking to idealize our society; it clearly, and brutally, presents a case for the illusions that we feed ourselves and mindsets we are vulnerable to.
Pros: Historical, contemporary, and fictional American life are all confronted and explained in clear terms with examples and cause and effect presented. Connective tissue is put on display, and negative societal/behavioral aspects of America are dragged into the light.
Cons: Kinda depressing. Would like to see some counterarguments.
All in all, I think this book says a lot about America, and in particular has a strong impact on the events occurring today(the 2nd Trump presidency). Strongly recommend for anyone who cares about how we got where we are, or any who are interested in the complex social dynamics of a country based on wishful thinking.
The breakdown of an entire nation's history, focused specifically on the delusions that we are weak to and fall for, is not something I thought to find so fascinating- but this book has changed my mind.
This book isn't for anyone who idolizes America or is looking to idealize our society; it clearly, and brutally, presents a case for the illusions that we feed ourselves and mindsets we are vulnerable to.
Pros: Historical, contemporary, and fictional American life are all confronted and explained in clear terms with examples and cause and effect presented. Connective tissue is put on display, and negative societal/behavioral aspects of America are dragged into the light.
Cons: Kinda depressing. Would like to see some counterarguments.
All in all, I think this book says a lot about America, and in particular has a strong impact on the events occurring today(the 2nd Trump presidency). Strongly recommend for anyone who cares about how we got where we are, or any who are interested in the complex social dynamics of a country based on wishful thinking.