Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

Everyone realizes that things have become weird in US politics and culture over the past several decades. Andersen argues that this recent development actually has deep historical roots going back 500 years. In this romp through US history, Andersen asserts that Americans have been dreamers and gamblers. They lived in a land immersed in possibilities. Historically, the US was a national culture based on Protestantism and the Enlightenment. These foundations meant Americans valued free thinking, discipline, literacy, empiricism, skepticism, and reason. Unfortunately, during the last few decades the balances between the various aspects of Protestant and Enlightenment culture have become unbalanced. Phenomena such as talk radio and the internet have abetted this dysfunction, where outlandish conspiracy theories have driven out respect for expertise and facts. All of this might sound like dry intellectualism, but Andersen's prose and presentation is both compelling and entertaining. He presents his tale of the country's current woes with humor, passion, and a deluge of historical evidence. Not everyone will like what Andersen has to say, but he has written a fine work of history that convincingly explains how we got to where we are today. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All public and academic levels/libraries. --Ronald Fritze, Athens State University

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

We have elected a President who regularly spews out alternate facts and conspiracy theories. According to writer and popular broadcaster Andersen (True Believers, 2012), this isn't an aberration but a logical culmination of an evolving trend in our national DNA. America was founded on the freedom of the individual, a laudable concept with a dark side: everyone has license to believe and propagate a personal version of reality. That, combined with the dramatic acceleration of information-sharing over the Internet, has given rise to a segment of our society that is living in a fantasy land in which verifiable facts are forbidden. To support this assertion, Andersen takes readers on a long, chronological tour, beginning with the religious certainty and intolerance of sixteenth-century Protestants. He then proceeds to savage colonial witch scares, Mormonism, fake medicinal cures, and a wide variety of contemporary political delusions. Andersen paints with a broad brush, and his efforts to connect dots seem flawed at times. Still, this disturbing examination of how fringe and crackpot ideas enter the mainstream makes worthy, provocative reading.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

When did Americans come to shun reality? When did the American experiment become a congeries of solipsisms?"As I pass by fish in barrels," writes Studio 360 host Andersen (True Believers, 2012, etc.) at the outset of this entertaining tour of American irreality, "I will often shoot them." Indeed he does, but then, as writers as various as H.L. Mencken and Christopher Hitchens long ago discovered, American society offers endless targets. Andersen finds a climacteric in Karl Rove's pronouncement, a dozen years ago, that those people who live in "the reality-based community" need to understand that "that's not the way the world really works anymore." True enough: Andersen closes with the rise of Trump-ism and its "critical mass of fantasy and lies" that is in danger of becoming "something much worse than nasty, oafish, reality-show pseudoconservatism." It's not just the Trumpies who are ruining things for everyone; by the author's account, the nice liberals who refuse to vaccinate their children are as much a part of the problem as those who flock to creation museums and megachurches. All are waystations of Andersen's "Fantasyland," an assemblage not just of scattered false beliefs, but whole lifestyles cobbled from them, which lands us in the 1960s and its ethos: "Do your own thing, find your own reality, it's all relative." It's not, but that's where we are today, at least by Andersen's account, though he hastens to add that approving nods to political correctness are not necessarily the same thing as endorsing perniciousness. Throughout, the author names namesDr. Oz, for one, won't be happy, and neither will Oprahand takes no prisoners, offering incitement for the rest of us to do the same. "We need to become less squishy," Andersen writes, and instead gird up for some reality-based arguments against the "dangerously untrue and unreal." A spirited, often entertaining rant against things as they are. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Andersen (True Believers) 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. According to the author, the 18th century's "First Great Delirium" ushered in utopian fantasies, religious and supernatural cults, and spurious medical treatments, which resurfaced with a vengeance with the 1960s counterculture and continues unabated. In the 21st century, the Internet fuels the "fantasy-industrial complex," which has made entertainment the force behind pop culture, the media, and politics. Trump's appeal, claims Andersen, is his skill at invoking American myths of greatness and opportunity, historically limited to mostly wealthy, white males. He asserts that the president has become the leader of the United States of Fantasyland, with his reality TV and Art of the Deal credentials. Andersen's spirited, thought-provoking narrative provides a compelling view of the current polarized state of U.S. politics, although the author holds out some hope that Fantasyland has peaked with the Trump administration. VERDICT This engaging work will find a wide and appreciative audience among general readers and scholars alike. [See the author Q&A on p. 130.-Ed.]-Karl -Helicher, formerly with Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.