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mujerdee's review against another edition
3.0
Too flippin depressing pre-Election and post-Insurrection, and overall I'd rather watch TRMS.
ericfheiman's review against another edition
4.0
I’m guessing a lot of this history was already around in print form. But Andersen is a lively writer and he always manages to interweave cultural history with the straight history that is usually the only focus of other historian authors.
Regardless of my stylistic preferences, this is a necessary read for anyone who wants to understand why we’ve reached the point we have in 2020, and possibly how we’re going to get out of it.
(Read his earlier book Fantasyland first, as they make a very compelling and complete pair.)
Regardless of my stylistic preferences, this is a necessary read for anyone who wants to understand why we’ve reached the point we have in 2020, and possibly how we’re going to get out of it.
(Read his earlier book Fantasyland first, as they make a very compelling and complete pair.)
ogreart's review against another edition
4.0
If you have looked around and asked yourself, "How the hell did we get to this point?" This is a good book to read.
kwheeles's review against another edition
5.0
This book embodies my own thinking (in much clarified form) and my own life experiences regarding the US political economy. I studied economics in college in the latter half of the 1970s, when income *equality* was peaking. Taxes on high income earners were about twice what they are today (before 'trickle down' theories had been rigorously tested and failed). And I actually took anti-trust law as a course (before it quietly slunk off stage after the decision to use economic efficiency - low prices - as the gauge of harm, rather than concentration or predatory behavior). This was before the right wing think tanks and their astroturfed 'citizens movements' funded by Koch, Mercer, et al; before the Federalist society and the Law and Economics movement in the law; before Murdoch's malignancy in press had grown to encompass Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (a paper I read and treasured from my college years until he purchased it in 2007); before student debt was a thing; before Citizens United had allowed the rich to buy elections. As America's standing has slipped to mediocre or worse in many areas - take healthcare costs, healthcare outcomes, infant mortality (pro-lifers take note), gun violence (but I digress) - we continue to project a boastful American exceptionalism that is no longer merited.
I enjoyed the author's use of the classic 'Veil of Ignorance' thought experiment, which they bring home with the following quote which applies the experiment to our current day US:
"In a U.S. society of perfect economic equality, all the money would instead be divided equally among Americans—the total income of $19 trillion (according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis) and the U.S. personal wealth of about $100 trillion (according to the Federal Reserve), all parceled out equally to each of the 129 million U.S. households. In this imaginary America 2, every household has a net worth of $800,000 and an annual income from all sources of $140,000."
I enjoyed the author's use of the classic 'Veil of Ignorance' thought experiment, which they bring home with the following quote which applies the experiment to our current day US:
"In a U.S. society of perfect economic equality, all the money would instead be divided equally among Americans—the total income of $19 trillion (according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis) and the U.S. personal wealth of about $100 trillion (according to the Federal Reserve), all parceled out equally to each of the 129 million U.S. households. In this imaginary America 2, every household has a net worth of $800,000 and an annual income from all sources of $140,000."
nastja_m's review against another edition
5.0
Quite an infuriating read, but brilliant all the same.
guarinous's review
5.0
One of the few different dictionary definitions for "leviathan" is "a thing that is very large or powerful", a term of literal Biblical proportions that in 2020 seems to be the best term for the USA's capitalist system and mindset. A leviathan of a system requires a leviathan of a book and Kurt Andersen has obliged with Evil Geniuses, an expose of America's wrong turn from New Deal to Raw Deal and the dismantling and disempowerment of the American middle class.
Andersen takes readers on a short journey through America's history from the founding fathers to the Covid-19 pandemic, and along the way details the various methods that "big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots" have used to consolidate and maintain financial power. Major focus is given to the "politics of nostalgia" and the argument that major cultural shifts have largely been stifled since the 60s leading to a jaded society that no longer expects major change to ever realistically occur.
This is a heavy book in both subject matter and length, but Andersen does an admirable job spelling most things out in laymen's terms which means you won't need a double major in history and economics to digest his explanations as to how exactly we got to this point. While you'll learn a lot, you may leave feeling a bit surprised and depressed by just how intelligently these "evil geniuses" have plotted the course of America's history for the last few decades. Required reading in this bizarro year of 2020!
**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Random House**
Andersen takes readers on a short journey through America's history from the founding fathers to the Covid-19 pandemic, and along the way details the various methods that "big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots" have used to consolidate and maintain financial power. Major focus is given to the "politics of nostalgia" and the argument that major cultural shifts have largely been stifled since the 60s leading to a jaded society that no longer expects major change to ever realistically occur.
This is a heavy book in both subject matter and length, but Andersen does an admirable job spelling most things out in laymen's terms which means you won't need a double major in history and economics to digest his explanations as to how exactly we got to this point. While you'll learn a lot, you may leave feeling a bit surprised and depressed by just how intelligently these "evil geniuses" have plotted the course of America's history for the last few decades. Required reading in this bizarro year of 2020!
**I was given a copy of this book by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Random House**
alibi313's review against another edition
5.0
Confirmation of the downward spiral of American democracy that’s been obvious my entire adult life, as the author recounts how we got to Trump starting with the the election of Reagan in 1980. Takes us right up to the early days of the pandemic, where Andersen echoes my hope that this inflection point will begin turning us away from the right wing politics responsible for the extreme economic inequity developed over the last 40 years.
rick2's review against another edition
3.0
A very good steelman version of left leaning political thought. A fair amount of overlap between this and Fantasyland by the same author.
I would recommend Fantasyland over this book.
I would recommend Fantasyland over this book.