
Evil Geniuses
The Unmaking of America: A Recent History
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Narrated by:
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Kurt Andersen
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By:
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Kurt Andersen
About this listen
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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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
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very listenable political mystery/ romance
- By connie on 07-19-12
By: Kurt Andersen
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Turn of the Century
- By: Kurt Andersen
- Narrated by: John Rubinstein
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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As big and exciting as the next century, this is a novel of real life at our giddy, feverish, topsy-turvy edge of the millennium. Turn of the Century is a good old-fashioned novel about the day after tomorrow—an uproarious, exquisitely observed panorama of our world as the twentieth century morphs into the twenty-first, transforming family, marriage, and friendship and propelled by the supercharged global businesses and new technologies that make everyone's lives shake and spin a little faster.
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Not so hot
- By S. Morris on 02-19-08
By: Kurt Andersen
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Heyday
- By: Kurt Andersen
- Narrated by: Charles Leggett
- Length: 26 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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During one month in 1848, gold is discovered in California, the United States wins its first foreign war, and an English gentleman named Benjamin Knowles falls in love with actress and part-time prostitute Polly Lucking. He also meets her brother Duff, a damaged veteran of the Mexican War, and befriends the unforgettable Timothy Skaggs. Lured by the prospect of gold, they set off on a transcontinental race west. However, they are unaware that a stranger bent on revenge shadows their every move.
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Where's the buzz on this book?
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Kurt Andersen
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Survival of the Richest
- Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
- By: Douglas Rushkoff
- Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff
- Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff traces the origins of The Mindset in science and technology through its current expression in missions to Mars, island bunkers, AI futurism, and the metaverse. In a dozen urgent, electrifying chapters, he confronts tech utopianism, the datafication of all human interaction, and the exploitation of that data by corporations. Through fascinating characters, Rushkoff explains why those with the most power to change our current trajectory have no interest in doing so.
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It promises much and delivers too little.
- By jim on 12-28-22
By: Douglas Rushkoff
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The Dark Side
- The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
- By: Jane Mayer
- Narrated by: Richard McGonagle
- Length: 16 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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The Dark Side is a narrative account of the decisions the U.S. made after September 11, decisions that not only violated the Constitution, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, Jane Mayer relates specific cases, shown in real time against the larger tableau of Washington, looking at the intelligence gained and the price paid. In all cases, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, our country's place in the world, and its sense of itself.
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Must read history
- By nancy udell on 11-09-08
By: Jane Mayer
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The Man Who Broke Capitalism
- How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
- By: David Gelles
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welch’s achievements didn’t stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GE’s stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation.
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OnlyPart of the Whole Story
- By teekay on 09-29-22
By: David Gelles
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Vulture Capitalism
- Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
- By: Grace Blakeley
- Narrated by: Grace Blakeley
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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It’s easy to look at the state of the world around us and feel hopeless. We live in an era marked by war, climate crisis, political polarization, and acute inequality—and yet many of us feel powerless to do anything about these profound issues. We’ve been assured that unfettered capitalism is necessary to ensure our freedom and prosperity but why, in our age of unchecked corporate power, are most of us living paycheck to paycheck? When the economy falters, why do governments bail out corporations and shareholders but leave everyday people in the dust?
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Excellent background knowledge
- By Herbert Ferguson on 04-17-25
By: Grace Blakeley
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A Brief History of Equality
- By: Thomas Piketty
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The world’s leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding, a perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books.
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Excellent, more accessable, contribution.
- By P. Dean on 09-30-22
By: Thomas Piketty
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The Future Is History
- How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
- By: Masha Gessen
- Narrated by: Masha Gessen
- Length: 16 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Masha Gessen's understanding of the events and forces that have wracked Russia in recent times is unparalleled. In The Future Is History, Gessen follows the lives of four people born at what promised to be the dawn of democracy. Each of them came of age with unprecedented expectations, some as the children and grandchildren of the very architects of the new Russia, each with newfound aspirations of their own - as entrepreneurs, activists, thinkers, and writers, sexual and social beings.
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The author is an international treasure
- By ThreeGems on 10-16-17
By: Masha Gessen
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The Myth of American Idealism
- How U.S. Foreign Policy Endangers the World
- By: Noam Chomsky, Nathan J. Robinson
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of the world’s most prominent thinkers, an urgent warning of the threat that U.S. power poses to humanity’s future as well as a sharp indictment of both American foreign policy and the national myths that support it.
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Absolutely spot on except . . .
- By anthony pape on 11-09-24
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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Unredacted
- Russia, Trump, and the Fight for Democracy
- By: Christopher Steele
- Narrated by: Christopher Steele
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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To a unique degree, Christopher Steele has been an eyewitness observer of modern Russian history. He was a British diplomat and intelligence professional in Moscow when the Soviet Union was collapsing. Steele was there when the putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev took place and when Boris Yeltsin took over the newly independent Russia. After Vladimir Putin came to power, Steele rose to become one of British government’s leading Russia experts and played a central role in the investigation into the Kremlin-ordered murder of Alexander Litvinenko.
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Mostly a biography of Steele
- By Iread on 03-24-25
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The System
- Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
- By: Robert B. Reich
- Narrated by: Robert B. Reich
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy.
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Turn Off Your TV. Wake Up and Listen Now!
- By Benchmark on 03-25-20
By: Robert B. Reich
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A Little History of the World
- By: E. H. Gombrich
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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E. H. Gombrich's world history, an international best seller now available in English for the first time, is a text dominated not by dates and facts but by the sweep of experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements, and an acute witness to its frailties.
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an enlightening book; very well read
- By A.B.Oxford on 06-03-06
By: E. H. Gombrich
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The Conspiracy to End America
- Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy
- By: Stuart Stevens
- Narrated by: Jeff Bottoms
- Length: 5 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Today’s Republican party is not a “normal” political party in the American tradition. It has become an autocratic movement masquerading as a political party. As Stuart Stevens argues in The Conspiracy to End America, if we look away from that truth, we greatly increase the likelihood that the America we love will slip away, never to return.
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Required Reading
- By Arturo Zendejas on 10-27-23
By: Stuart Stevens
Everyone should listen to Kurt Andersen
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How conservatives and big business conned us.
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comprehensive
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A history reminder all Americans need to read
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Great book, both in hardcover and audible versions
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In depth yet plain and easy to understand. Right on the money.
Very comprehensive and thorough. Well written.
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A must read for anyone who cares about the future of The United States.
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How we got here!
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change your life
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How America Lost Its Way
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