I started reading this book before publication day back in 2018 and I have picked it up several times since then, but it has remained at 27% and I am officially giving up!

I had thought this book was going to be like a Bill Bryson title, a witty rollercoaster ride through American history but I actually found it to be quite dry. It's far too long, in need of a good edit and it just felt very much like an angry rant than the fun prose I was expecting from the blurb.

Overall, it's taken me 4 years to try and finish it and I'm have given up. Thank you to Ebury Publishing for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a very honest review.

This is an impressive book. It's flawed - many chapters could be significantly reduced without damaging the message, the message is often lost amidst rambling anecdotes - but by golly, this is a man who knows how to research. Facts, quotes, conclusions - it's all here. Kurt Andersen is a journalist by trade, and the quality shows: the writing flows, the arguments are there, though bloated in places, but I'd rather have a skimmable well written book like this than something inferior.

The book starts with the Founding Fathers, skims through the Wild West, and ends with the 45th President of the USA (by both chronology and ranking). With the verbosity, I did feel the thread was often lost but given the history lessons were still interesting, that's not at all a bad thing. The conclusion was that unkempt religion, unlike the European churches which are reigned in by the controlling powers, allowed people to express themselves uniquely, accepting their own truths and realities.

A fantastic book, highly enlightening for both those within Fantasyland and those who are out.

From the Salem Witch Trials to Medicine Shows, P. T. Barnum to alien abductions, Americans have always shown themselves to be generally more open to believing in crazy things than those from other nations. Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen is an interesting book that charts the history of America through its various fantastic obsessions and beliefs, showing how the country has become increasingly immersed in fantasy over the years to the point where many people are finding it hard to see where the boundaries between fact and fiction lie – if they even believe that such a boundary exists.

Sophie found Fantasyland hard to take seriously at points. While she is in total agreement that many of the beliefs described here are indeed dangerous as they can, and have, led to people being falsely imprisoned and killed, the author seemed keen to decry literally any activity that involved a degree of fantasy as putting people on a road to a complete breakdown in their ability to recognize the fact/fiction boundary. This included (among hundreds of examples) video games, television, Disney theme parks, Tolkien novels, historical reenactments, and cosplay. Indeed, a footnote tells us knowingly that Timothy McVeigh once visited Area 51 and watched the movie Contact on Death Row, as if these were somehow inextricably linked to his crimes. This tendency, unfortunately, means that many of the more consequential points are lost amid an atmosphere of “grumpy old man shouts at clouds“.

This is not a book that those with strong spiritual beliefs will enjoy as it vehemently links nearly all forms of religion and spiritual belief to living in fantasyland, nor will those who support the current president and GOP find themselves welcome among its pages. However, those who have watched the news cycle over the last few years and wondered whether the world actually is going insane will find much to validate themselves here.

I think this book offers an interesting perspective on the current climate in the USA and connects it to the past.

I personally don't have a direct experience with a lot of the topics but it was an eye-opening way to learn and understand it from a different perspective. It is not a book I would usually read but I think it was well worth my time.

I like the premise of this and I think some of the arguments are very valid, but ultimately this was slightly unsatisfying. It's not a fun romp, but it's not a serious examination of the facts either - it falls somewhere in between. It's also very white/european-centric view of America - and while his theory may hold true for the section of the population he's talking about, he doesn't really address other groups of people in the US very much at all - and the book basically assumes that the people that he's talking about are the ones that matter.

Smart journalese with a rather (for me) facile set of generalisations about development of a nation/society susceptible unlike other countries (??) to easy lies and fake news. He serious through history, claiming America is a totally built-from-new society ..I guess forgetting about indigenous peoples .. and forgetting that European and Susan African. countries too started out 'new'.. perhaps it's the breezy, overly confident tone of it all that got to me. Certainly very readable and broadly knowledgeable with a provocative edge. Nicely written, professional ..

Thought provoking exploration of the current state of the nation in the Trump era. Puts Trump in context in relation to the 'American Dream' and opens up debate about the future role of America on the national stage.

Timely description of how America has got to its current state and its current President. Read and be depressed and hopefully motivated to help makes changes.

Another book that really should be required reading for just about everyone - and should ideally be read together with David Goodhart's brilliant analysis of how the two worlds of 'Anywheres and Somewheres' have drifted apart and the consequences for western democracies when the cry 'enough is enough' is heard as the 'Somewhere' voter cannon fodder finally tires of being patronised and ignored. Both authors have a knack of putting their fingers on some fundamental truths, with Andersen exploring, in particular the way in which 'alternative truths' have been almost legitimised in popular political discourse. For readers of a nervous disposition I should warn you that there is a pessimistic flavour to the latter pages in his book, which could be profoundly depressing. However, it might be worth recalling that much the same thing was written about over two millennia ago in Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War - 'Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. (.............) The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. (........) The fair proposals of an adversary were met with jealous precautions by the stronger of the two, and not with a generous confidence. Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand.' Andersen's book is a warning - history, too, warns us of how fragile our seemingly settled status is and how emerging tyrants will use and abuse language and even our own democratic institutions to achieve their perverted ends.

This is a fascinating history of America showing how the current "post truth" era developed. Kurt Andersen shows how America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in their DNA. A couple of quotes will give the tone:-

"P.T Barnum was the great early American merchandiser of exciting secular fantasies and half-truths. His extremely successful pre-circus career derived from and fed a fundamental Fantasyland mindset: If some imaginary proposition is exciting, and nobody can prove it is untrue, then it is my right as an American to believe it is true."

"Of course, the premise of prepping and survivalism isn't necessarily delusional. It's possible some catastrophic breakdown of systems could occur and last for months or years. But any of us could win Mega Millions, too, and we don't rearrange our lives assuming it's going to happen. It's in this curiously wishful certainty of doomsday that prudence slides into fantasy."

Covering gun lobbying and the NRA among other issues, the survivalist part of the book is engrossing to someone with no understanding of the American gun culture. The way the author puts many uniquely American idiosyncrasies into their context is truly enlightening.

This is a wide ranging book which covers serious and potentially contentious areas of the American way of life but it is also an entertaining and educational book which makes you think. I'd recommend it to anyone trying to understand why people buy into empty rhetoric and not just the Americans. The book is slanted at American history but many of the outcomes and examples could equally well work elsewhere.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts.
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.
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. To invent and believe what the hell you like is in some ways an unwritten constitutional right. Every citizen is more than ever gloriously free to construct and promote any vision of the world he or she devoutly believes to be true. That do-your-own-thing freedom - run amok since the individualism and relativism of the 1960s and later the unprecedented free-for-all world of the Internet, is the driving credo of America's current transformation where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.
Fantasyland is a journey that joins the dots between the disparate crazed franchises of true believers – America’s endless homespun rebooting of Christianity from Mormons to charismatics, medicine shows to new age quacks, conspiracy theorists of every stripe, showmen hucksters from P T Barnum to Trump himself, Creationists to climate change deniers, extra-terrestrial obsessives to gun-toting libertarians, anti-Government paranoia, pseudoscience, survivalists and satanic panic. Along the way Kurt Andersen has created a unique and raucous history of America and a new paradigm for understanding our post-factual world.

"You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts." - That pretty much sums up the basis for this book. With a combination of political and social history, and am eye for pop psychology, the author takes the reader on the journey from Puritan beginnings to the craziness that is now the United States.

What did I like about this book? Well, the most obvious thing, to me, was the history. Not being from the US, the background was critical for me to get up to speed with the cultural aspects of the country, and to see where these beliefs came from. Also, I was really happy with all the cool trivia and statistics. Kept what could have been a very dense and difficult-to-read book from becoming like a textbook.

What didn't I like? I get the opinion that the author doesn't like the current US President very much. And that is fine, each to their own - I don't like him either. But it comes across so heavily in this book, like Trump and his supporters are the only ones to ever behave in such a way. Although he provided numerous examples of historical events that were obviously very similar, if in just a smaller scale.
Also, the pop psychology (as I referred to it) got a little much after a while - I got the impression that if religion wasn't at fault, it was video games, or science fiction. Or maybe living in suburbia...I can't remember...

Still, a solid 4-stars from me as there was much more positive in this book for me than not.


Paul
ARH

America is a fascinating country, a state of mind even. It's such a bizarre mix of amazing scientists and Noble prize winners, reality TV show celebrities turning presidents, entertainment industry pumping its creations in the whole world, disturbing TV shows, crazy gun laws, hundreds of different religions and belief systems. Just a mix of everything and this book takes us on a ride on how it all came to be and live in one glorious place of The United States of America.

I don't really understand religion, and it's fascinating to me how it was created and sustained it's huge role in the life of many people to this day. But what's even more interesting about religion, is the religion of the States. We in Europe do not have such a vast range of different beliefs, I've never heard about thousands of people gathering in one spot and essentially creating a new system of beliefs that is based on one of the books of the old religions, but interpreted in a different way. Europeans are firmly in the grasps of the old religions, and new interpretations of a Bible are not taking over massive congregations over and creating their own religion. But such things are not unusual in America. Many of America's religions were created by pastors or believers who found a new meaning of a Bible passage, or who even claimed to receive a new world of God and written their own religious scriptures. It's absolutely fascinating, and Fantasyland gives a broad history lesson on this, the author puts the curious case of religion in the States at the forefront of why Americans are who they are.

Unfortunately, no matter how interesting the subject is, Fantasyland is not the easiest and quickest read. At times author goes into the mode of fact dump and is jumping from one subject to another. It wasn't a coherent story at times, I felt that the author was trying to squeeze in too much information without putting it all in a well put together a story that will easy reader into the chronology of events and it's meaning to the story. It won't be the same experience for everyone, but I felt lost at times and references to characters introduced pages or chapters ago were hard for me to follow. It was too many names to remember, and who knows which one of those people will be relevant to the story again.

Even with my problems to follow the story at the times, I still enjoyed the book. It's fascinating to read about the American way of life and how it came to be. The book spends a lot of time on religion, but we also have a chance to learn about other American industries like news broadcasting, conspiracies and false stories spread online, entertainment, drugs and alternative medicine. If you're fascinated by documentaries about lives of Americans who glorify alternative medicine, carry guns everywhere, prepare for the end of the world or any other cases that are in my mind so truly American, you will love this book.

Some absolutely fascinating information and astounding facts that made me pause and share what I'd just read (and couldn't believe!) with my partner. Unfortunately, for me those fascinating sections were just too few and far between. At times chapters were overwhelmingly packed with facts making them tedious, and at other times the book seemed to assume knowledge that I (as a non-American) didn't have.

A lot of the time I agreed with the author and his stance, but as a book full of disparaging remarks about 'alternative facts' and the 'everyone's own truth is true' is attitude, it felt very opinionated. It reads quite angry at times and whilst I can understand the anger with the current climate, I didn't enjoy it. I would've liked to see more citations or a bibliography of some kind.

This is a whopper of a book; I had to read it in chunks between my favoured fictional titles because I don't have the patience for lomg stretches of non-fiction, but it was fascinating, especially if you have an interest in the current political climate in America. The author has a deft touch and provides both insight and entertainment - I gathered a huge collection of dinner-party trivia from this and was intrigued by the central premise, which I had never considered before. Andersen posits the theory that after decades of attempts to settle America (and find gold) where the vast majority of the original explorers failed and/or perished, it's clear that the original American settlers were those most easily swayed by the fantasy and those most immune to reality.

The Oxford Dictionaries 2016 Word of the Year was “post-truth” defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. The word appears to have been first used by Steve Tesich in 1992, but there’s no doubt that its recent prominence and resonance overwhelmingly derive from 2016’s EU referendum in the UK and Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.

The post-truth phenomenon has given rise to numerous books and Kurt Andersen’s ‘Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History’ is part of this burgeoning sub-genre. As its title denotes, it is a review of how the United States has allegedly become progressively detached from objective reality to the point where it has passed through the looking-glass so that what Andersen calls “the Fantasy-Industrial Complex” now dominates public discourse.

According to Andersen the potential for the USA “losing its mind” was there from its inception in its embodiment of the Enlightenment ideal of intellectual freedom, whereby every individual is welcome to believe anything he or she wishes. It was in the 1960s, however, that Andersen sees the rot as really setting in with counterculture solipsism legitimized by the relativistic trahison des clercs of the likes of Charles Reich, R.D. Laing, Paul Feyerabend, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Matters only got worse in subsequent decades, he claims, with the echo chambers of the internet, the elimination of the federal Fairness Doctrine in broadcasting and the Christian takeover of the Republican party.

If Andersen was really convinced by his own thesis you might expect his tone to be deeply pessimistic, even elegiac, but it tends instead to be chippy and combative, joyfully taking sideswipes at, or even taking both barrels to, Mormons, Creationists, climate-change deniers, anti-vaccine advocates, those who claim to have been abducted by aliens and a huge cast of snake-oil salesmen, conspiracy theorists and their credulous followers. Andersen says that he could “devote an entire chapter to L. Ron Hubbard” but we are spared that, which is just as well given that this long book (approaching 500 pages) is hardly short of examples to raise the ire of those who pride themselves on their rationalist or scientific world-view, or the dismissal or abuse of those whom he reviles.

That last sentence illustrates two major problems with the book. Firstly, whilst it will provide a self-righteous glow for the like-minded it doesn’t really engage with those whom he castigates. Andersen, for example, attempts no proof to convince the reader that the main findings of the Warren Commission Report into JFK’s assassination are right but merely asserts that its “essential conclusion was almost certainly correct”. It could, of course, be argued that those whom Andersen criticises are unreachable, having cut themselves off from reasoned debate, but with little, or no effort made in that direction, he can come across as more than a little smug – a sort of 21st century equivalent of a visitor to Bedlam.

Secondly, Andersen’s analysis indulges in unjustifiably broad brushstrokes, which tend to treat all people of faith, for example, as worthy of derision. There are undoubtedly unhinged people of faith but possessing religious faith is not, most open-minded people might concede, synonymous with the state of being unhinged.

In short, Andersen has written an entertaining book which will add somewhat to the understanding of those interested in finding out how the current state of the nation of the United States has been arrived at but there are much better, because much more rigorously argued, books on the general post-truth phenomenon such as Mark Thompson’s ‘Enough Said’ or Matthew d’Ancona’s ‘Post-Truth’.

This book was so interesting to read. I really enjoyed that it looked at the history of America and how events and ideas from the past inform today. I found it really concise and a complete page-turner

This is an insightful analysis of the influence religion ( and eccentricity) has had on the growth of America. It takes the reader up to recent times with a humorous,lighthearted look at the odd ties who started it all and who have been replaced by the same as the decades passed. Cleverly written and different.