Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire

A razor-sharp thinker offers a groundbreaking and influential 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 and fantasists of every stripe . . . to Donald Trump.

In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, one of our sharpest observers, Kurt Andersen, demonstrates that what’s happening in our country today—this strange, post-truth, “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.

If you want to understand the politics and culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book.

Watch Kurt in conversation about Fantasyland with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg: