Dallas Public Library

Bad stories, what the hell just happened to our country, Steve Almond

eng

no index present

non fiction

Bad stories

1026411856

Steve Almond

what the hell just happened to our country

"Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn't just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: Toward a Unified Theory of How It All Came Apart is Almond's effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices--from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin--to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people. The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It's the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country"--, Provided by publisher

Bad story #1 Watergate was about a corrupt president -- Bad story #2 The United States is a representative democracy-- Bad story #3 Our grievances matter more than our vulnerabilities -- Bad story #4 Economic anguish fueled trumpism -- Bad story #5 Trump was a change agent -- Bad story #6 What amuses us can't hurt us -- Bad story #7 Journalism would make a hero of me -- Bad story #8 Nobody would vote for a guy like that -- Bad story #9 I do get a lot of honesty on the Internet -- Bad story #10 Sports bring us together as a nation -- Bad story #11 American women will never empower a sexual predator -- Bad story #12 Our court jesters will rescue the kingdom -- Bad story #13 There is no such thing as fair and balanced -- Bad story #14 The vast right-wing conspiracy was just a conspiracy -- Bad story #15 Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses -- Bad story #16 The Cold War is over (and we won!) -- Final bad story America is incapable of moral improvement