The United States of fear / Tom Engelhardt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Engelhardt, Tom, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fear.

Politics and government.

Civilization.

United States--Civilization--21st century.

United States.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001--Influence.

September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001.

Political culture--United States.

Political culture.

United States--Politics and government--21st century.

United States--Foreign relations--21st century.

International relations.

Fear--United States.

War and society.

Physical Description:

222 pages ; 22 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago, Ill. : Haymarket Books ; [Minneapolis, Minn.] : Distribution in the U.S. through Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 2011.

Summary:

In 2008, when the U.S. National Intelligence Council issued its latest report meant for the administration of newly elected President Barack Obarrra, it predicted that the planet's "sole superpower" would suffer a modest decline and a soft landing fifteen years hence. In his new book The United States of Fear, Tom Engelhardt makes clear that Americans should don their crash helmets and buckle their seat belts, because the United States is on the path to a major decline at a startling speed. Engelhardt offers a savage anatomy of how successive administrations in Washington took the "Soviet path"-pouring American treasure into the military, war, and national security-and so helped drive their country off the nearest cliff.

This is the startling tale of how fear was profitably shot into the national bloodstream, how the country-gripped by terror fantasies-was locked down, and how a brain-dead Washington elite fiddled (and profited) while America quietly burned.

Think of it as the story of how the Cold War really ended, with the triumphalist "sole superpower" of 1991 heading slowly for the same exit through which the Soviet Union left the stage twenty years earlier. Book jacket.

Contents:

American warscapes

The United States of fear

Entering the Soviet era

Their dead and ours

Obama's flailing wars

Waist deep in the Washington quagmire

Living with war

Imperial decline

On being a critic.

Notes:

Includes index.

"A TomDispatch book"--front cover.

ISBN:

9781608461547

1608461548

OCLC:

709681380