Fantasyland (Andersen) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Kurt Andersen's latest opus [tells of] a people who have committed themselves … to florid, collective delusion.… If there's a flaw in this book, it's repetitiveness. Andersen…goes for wide rather than deep So he doesn't examine, for example, how we would separate the junk from the gems.… "You're entitled to your own opinions and our own fantasies, but not your own facts — especially if your fantastical facts hurt people," he says.… But the attempt is brief and feels halfhearted … [and] leaves a reader worried that a short manifesto on facts won't save us. 
Hanna Rosin - New York Times Book Review


Americans believe what they want. That’s the heart of… the new book by Kurt Andersen.… He begins with Old World colonists seeking to forge a New World based on self-determination and freedom of thought, and ends with Donald Trump.… He offers not so much a diagnosis of a country alienated from its values but a second opinion.
Christopher Borrelli - Chicago Tribune


Calling it the "fantasy-industrial complex," Andersen documents the myriad entities — business, religion, politics, entertainment — that have produced a populace that eschews reality for fantasy, facts for fiction, real life for make-believe.… In this absorbing, must-read polemic, Andersen exhaustively chronicles a development eating away at the very foundation of Americanism.… "The good news …is that America may now be at peak Fantasyland. We can hope."
Paul Alexander - Newsday


With this rousing book, [Kurt] Andersen proves to be the kind of clear-eyed critic an anxious country needs in the midst of a national crisis.
San Francisco Chronicle


Andersen interprets American history, beginning with the Puritans, in part as a myth-driven, religiously fundamental mental, antiscientific engine that ultimately paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump.… Verdict: [E]ngaging… for general readers and scholars alike.  —Karl Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA
Library Journal


[A]n entertaining tour of American irreality."… Do your own thing, find your own reality, it's all relative." … A spirited, often entertaining rant against things as they are.
Kirkus Reviews