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Fantasyland
- Narrated by: Kurt Andersen
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
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Fantasyland
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Publisher's Summary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Fantasyland, written and read by Kurt Anderson.
You’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts
Fantasy is the USA’s primary product. From the Pilgrim Fathers onward America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But, this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.
So how did we get to this weird pseudo-reality, where science and objective facts are dismissed in favour of opinions and wild speculation, or indeed, fantasies? The post truth, fake news, free-for-all mentality isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. If you want to understand Trump's America, how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you have to go back to the very beginning and take a dizzying road trip across five centuries of crackpot delusion and make-believe from Salem to Scientology.
Fantasyland is a journey that connects the dots between crazed franchises of true believers – a rich freak show tapestry from Mormons to Flat-Earthers and satanic panic, new age quacks to anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists of every stripe, creationists to climate change deniers, UFO-obsessives to gun-toting libertarians, showmen hucksters from P T Barnum to Trump himself, all topped off with a dangerous dose of anti-government paranoia and pseudoscience. Along the way, New York Times bestselling author Kurt Andersen has created a unique and raucous history of America and a new paradigm for understanding our post-factual world.
Critic Reviews
What listeners say about Fantasyland
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Reyna
- 06-02-2021
What's with this guy's focus on plastic surgery?
A broad-strokes shallow probe over a deluge of topics linked together with a flimsy thread. It manages to go on for quite some time without providing enough depth to illustrate a focused point. It tries, bless it's heart, with more or less good intentions to illustrate an overarching throughline through America's origins to where it is today. However such topics require more depth than this book can manage to provide. It also jumps around in time way too much despite ostensibly presenting itself as a linear exploration.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- David
- 05-10-2022
Interesting, informative and thoughtful
I write as (a) Australian (b) Christian and (c) sympathetic to the overall thesis explored by Kurt.
Decades ago I read Amusing Ourselves to Death by the late Neil Postman. This lengthy book had a similar lineage, and argument.
As a (at times) Christian agnostic I don’t think religion , in particular or in general, is as dire as Kurt argues … but I don’t live in the USA.
I listened to the audio version and enjoyed it for many reasons.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Kel Dommage
- 16-06-2020
USA explained
For a curious and confused Australian this book explained a lot. Plenty of dry humour.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Tony
- 04-06-2021
great book, if you can get past his heavy bias.
I loved this book. however the author is very opinionated and pretty biased against Christianity. having said that he does provide a great insight into the American culture of fantasy land.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- AW
- 13-10-2021
Good points, lacks depth
While it's a good summation of American insanity-and timely with it, too-it is a victim of its broad scope in that it struggles to cover the wide range of topics included and tie them together.
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