3.5
The Great Derangement
ByPublisher Description
A REVELATORY AND DARKLY COMIC ADVENTURE THROUGH A NATION ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN—FROM THE HALLS OF CONGRESS TO THE BASES OF BAGHDAD TO THE APOCALYPTIC CHURCHES OF THE HEARTLAND
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off—or radicalized—by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (“they hate us for our freedom”) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.
Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.
Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off—or radicalized—by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (“they hate us for our freedom”) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.
Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.
Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Great Derangement Reviews
3.5
“The great derangement (climate change and the unthinkable) – by Amitav Ghosh
In this non fiction on climate change, Ghosh deals with the impending climate crises and our role in it. The narrative divided into three parts- literature, history and politics, critically examines the role of each of these aspects in their manner of handling the bleak reality. He rues the fact that the modern novel in its form has no space for this subject and the only manner this subject is dealt with is through non fiction[read that as scientific reports], adding that this makes the issue at hand non-comprehensible and foreign. Another aspect he covers in this book is the life forces of the seemingly non-alive elements of nature. The opening line of the book, “Who can forget those moments when something that seems inanimate turns out to be vitally, even dangerously alive?” sets the context for this beautifully. In the second part, it delves into the historic aspect of the origin of climate change, examining the role of industrialisation, western capitalism and colonialisation- also touching upon the unbalance between the west and the east in terms of industry and population (standard of living). In the last part which begins with the statement “Climate change poses a powerful challenge to what is perhaps the single most important political concept of the modern era: the idea of freedom, which is central not only to contemporary politics but also to the humanities, the arts, and literature” – Ghosh examines the inequality in power as a major factor in the consumption patterns of the world. In conclusion, a well written book in an essay format which is not an easy read to the say the least but definitely a worthy one!”
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