Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy

America’s leading essayist on the frantic retreat of democracy, in the fire and smoke of the war on terrorIn twenty-five years of imperial adventure, America has laid waste to its principles of democracy. The new millennium saw the democratic election of an American president nullified by the Supreme Court, and the pretender launching a wasteful, vainglorious and never-ending war on terror, doomed to end in defeat and the loss of America’s prestige abroad.All this culminates in the sunset swamp of the 2016 election—a farce dominated by Donald Trump, a self-glorifying photo-op bursting star-spangled bombast in air. This spectacle would be familiar to Aris

"Why Trump? Why Clinton? Why Reagan? Why Bush?" according to Matthew Stevenson. If you want to understand, both historically and contemporaneously, how the United States traded in its democracy for a sound-and-light reality show, look no further than this wonderful collection of essays by Lewis H. Lapham. Each sentence here is a delight, and while the conclusions are dark, there is hope for any country that can produce such a vibrant thinker and writer.. Five Stars Mike La Bonne Superb writer.. John Cheley said Five Stars. America's greatest essayist!

He was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame in 2007. His columns received the National Magazine Award in 1995 for exhibiting “an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity,” and, in 2002, the Thomas Paine Journalism Award. Lapham is the founding Editor of Lapham’s Quarterly and the Editor

Taken together, the book’s essays, published between 1990 and 2016 in Lapham’s Quarterly and Harper’s, serve as a powerful and alarming American history … With Age of Folly, Lapham provides the historical context needed to understand our current political moment.”—Adam Boretz, The Millions. Mencken—is the most provocative and engaging essayist in the country.” —George Plimpton “One of the last liberal thinkers, a man of elegant humor. L. I lov