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Book

Fantasyland : how America went haywire : a 500-year history

Call Number

  • 973 A5447 (CEN, OSH, WSQ)

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Publication Information

New York : Random House, 2017.

Physical Description

xiii, 462 pages ; 25 cm

Notes

Includes index.

Contents

  • Now entering fantasyland
  • Part I. The conjuring of America: 1517-1789
  • I believe, therefore I am right: the Protestants
  • All that glitters: the gold-seekers
  • Building our own private heaven on Earth: the puritans
  • The God-given freedom to believe in God
  • Imaginary friends and enemies: the early satanic panics
  • The first me century: religion gets American
  • Meanwhile, in the 18th century reality-based community
  • Part II. United States of amazing: the 1800s
  • The first great delirium
  • The all-American fan fiction of Joseph Smith, prophet
  • Quack nation: magical but modern ?
  • Fantastic business: the gold rush inflection point
  • In search of monsters to destroy: the conspiracy-theory habit
  • The war between states of mind
  • Ten million little houses on the prairie
  • Fantasy industrialized
  • Part III. A long arc bending toward reason: 1900-1960
  • Progress and backlash
  • The biggest backlash: brand new old-time religion
  • The business of America is show business
  • Big rock candy mountains: utopia in the suburbs and the sun
  • The 1950s seemed so normal
  • Part IV. Big bang: the 1960s and 70s
  • Big bang: the hippies
  • Big bang: the intellectuals
  • Big bang: the Christians
  • Big bang: politics and government and conspiracies
  • Big bang: living in a land of entertainment
  • Part V. Fantasyland scales: from the 1980s through the turn of the century
  • Making make-believe more realistic and real life more make-believe
  • Forever young: kids r us syndrome
  • The Reagan era and the start of the digital age
  • American religion from the turn of the millennium
  • Our wilder christianities: belief and practice
  • America versus the godless civilized world: why are we so exceptional?
  • Magical but not necessarily christian, spiritual but not religious
  • Blue-chip witch doctors: the re-enchantment of medicine
  • How the mainstream enabled fantasyland: squishies, cynics and believers
  • Anything goes
  • unless it picks my pocket or break my leg
  • Part VI. The problem with fantasyland: from the 1980s to the present and beyond
  • The inmates running the asylum decide monsters are everywhere
  • Reality is a conspiracy: the x-filing of America
  • Mad as hell, the new voice of the people
  • When the GOP went off the rails
  • Liberals denying science
  • Gun crazy
  • Final fantasy-industrial complex
  • Our inner children? They're going to Disney World!
  • The economic dreamtime
  • As fantasyland goes, so goes the nation.

Subjects