Evil Geniuses

The Unmaking of America: A Recent History

By: Kurt Andersen

Narrated by: Kurt Andersen

New York Times best seller

When did America give up on fairness? The author of Fantasyland tells the epic history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change - and charts a way back to the future.

“Essential, absorbing...a graceful, authoritative guide...a radicalized moderate’s moderate case for radical change.” (The New York Times Book Review)

During the 20th century, America managed to make its economic and social systems both more and more fair and more and more prosperous. A huge, secure, and contented middle class emerged. All boats rose together. But then the New Deal gave way to the Raw Deal. Beginning in the early 1970s, by means of a long war conceived of and executed by a confederacy of big business CEOs, the superrich, and right-wing zealots, the rules and norms that made the American middle class possible were undermined and dismantled. The clock was turned back on a century of economic progress, making greed good, workers powerless, and the market all-powerful while weaponizing nostalgia, lifting up an oligarchy that served only its own interests, and leaving the huge majority of Americans with dwindling economic prospects and hope.

Why and how did America take such a wrong turn? In this deeply researched and brilliantly woven cultural, economic, and political chronicle, Kurt Andersen offers a fresh, provocative, and eye-opening history of America's undoing, naming names, showing receipts, and unsparingly assigning blame - to the radical right in economics and the law, the high priests of high finance, a complacent and complicit Establishment, and liberal "useful idiots", among whom he includes himself.

Only a writer with Andersen's crackling energy, deep insight, and ability to connect disparate dots and see complex systems with clarity could make such a book both intellectually formidable and vastly entertaining. And only a writer of Andersen’s vision could reckon with our current high-stakes inflection point and show the way out of this man-made disaster.

©2020 Kurt Andersen (P)2020 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“This is the one book everyone must read as we figure out how to rebuild our country. With lucid writing and head-snapping insights, Kurt Andersen explores how a confederacy of the right and big business, with unabashed greed, deliberately reengineered our economy. To fix that will require understanding the roots of the problem. A triumph.”—Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

“Nostalgia is the antithesis of history. Andersen brilliantly exposes how nostalgia—the strategic oversimplification of our past—has erased complexity and friction from our country’s narrative to serve a single goal: to preserve the status quo for the benefit of those in power. Evil Geniuses documents how history and nostalgia are engaged in hand-to-hand combat that may determine our future.”—Ken Burns, director of The Civil War and The Roosevelts: An Intimate History

“How did the United States turn from its longstanding egalitarian ideals to its present course of socially and morally catastrophic inequality? Kurt Andersen interrogates the past half century with characteristic intellectual ambition and literary bravado to find out. At once cultural history, memoir, and riff, Evil Geniuses explains how our country found its way into this predicament, and how we might yet get out of it.”—Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy and Ronald Reagan

Everyone should listen to Kurt Andersen

There are only a few Good Geniuses like Kurt Andersen around. Not only does he have enormous academic and intellectual credibility, he has the street cred to go with it. Don't be scared... he's from the Midwest. Lots of quotations, research, and statistics to back him up. This book will make clear that most Americans are on the same page; whereas our government has become a tool of big business (the Evil Geniuses). Very well written too, and quite entertaining. Kurt Andersen for presidential advisor!

How conservatives and big business conned us.

Anderson lays out in fascinating detail all of the steps in the rise of modern "conservative," small govt America. It's a chilling narrative that connects the dots and shows how, little by little, conservatives and corporatists flushed a half century of post-New Deal prosperity down the toilet for all but the upper echelons of our society.

comprehensive

loved it. eye opening and distressing. we have a lot of work ahead of us. might move to Finland or Denmark.

A history reminder all Americans need to read

Memories are short, things easily forgotten and much much more hidden from view of the public.

Great book, both in hardcover and audible versions

This very persuasively written book (I am a Kurt Andersen fan) was a good listen. It lags a bit, but chapter 19 and onward are very good places to restart thus audible book.

Very comprehensive and thorough. Well written.

I listened to the audio version and was captivated thru out.
In depth yet plain and easy to understand. Right on the money.

A must read for anyone who cares about the future of The United States.

Mr. Andersen lays out the map and the territory of where we find ourselves socially, politically, artistically, and economically. Then he gives us astute and well reasoned solutions to help our country escape the oligarchic stranglehold that encumbers growth and opportunity in our society.

How we got here!

One of the best thorough explanations of how the country became so incompetent and how it has lost its democracy, and by whom. It is a journalistic recounting of what happened when, by whom that is easy to see. I've read several along this line and feel this one is the best. It's also always fun and more engaging when you listen to the author reading his own work.

change your life

incredibly good, essential for realizing that the world did not magically become an austerity hellscape, it did not organically tend toward this catastrophic capitalism like some natural force, it was made this way, by these people. somehow knowing what they did and how makes it seem more tangibly undo-able

How America Lost Its Way

A must for individuals that actually care about America and its future. A well researched and reasoned call to action.