How America Lost Its Mind
The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy (The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series, Volume 15)
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Narrated by:
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Peter Lerman
About this listen
Americans are losing touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with fact, rendering them unable to think sensibly about politics. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson explains the rise of a world of “alternative facts” and the slow motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us.
A call to action, his book encourages us to wrest institutional power from ideologues and disrupters and entrust it to sensible citizens and leaders to restore our commitment to mutual tolerance and restraint, to cleanse the internet of fake news and disinformation, and to demand a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant information from our news sources.
As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote decades ago, the rise of demagogues is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists”. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson makes a passionate case for fully and fiercely engaging on the side of truth and mutual respect in our present arms race between fact and fake, unity and division, civility and incivility.
The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.
Praise for the book:
“A book...that needed to be written...the response of a reasoned, thinking person to a cultural and political calamity that he and many others saw unfolding in slow motion.” (Keith Gaddie, coauthor of The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act)
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Three Card Monte Politics
- By J.B. on 06-19-20
By: Steve Benen
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The Party Is Over
- How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted
- By: Mike Lofgren
- Narrated by: Mel Foster
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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There was a time, not so very long ago, when perfectly rational people ran the Republican Party. So how did the party of Lincoln become the party of lunatics? That is what this book aims to answer. Fear not, the Dems come in for their share of tough talk - they are zombies, a party of the living dead. Mike Lofgren came to Washington in the early eighties - those halcyon, post-Nixonian glory days - for what he imagined would be a short stint on Capitol Hill.
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A Great Analysis
- By Dan D on 09-04-12
By: Mike Lofgren
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Wingnuts
- How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America
- By: John P. Avlon, Tina Brown - foreword
- Narrated by: John P. Avlon, Tina Brown (foreword)
- Length: 6 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Whats a wingnut? A wingnut is someone on the far-right or far-left wing of the political spectrum professional partisans, unhinged activists, and paranoid conspiracy theorists. Barack Obama campaigned as an antidote to the politics of polarization, promising to transcend the old divides of left and right, black and white, red states and blue. But in the first year of his presidency, he is presiding over an eruption of hate and hyper-partisanship that threatens to mock the promise upon which he was elected.
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Disturbingly disappointing
- By Steven on 02-20-10
By: John P. Avlon, and others
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Fault Lines
- A History of the United States Since 1974
- By: Kevin M. Kruse, Julian E. Zelizer
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 14 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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If you were asked when America became polarized, your answer would likely depend on your age: You might say during Barack Obama’s presidency, or with the post-9/11 war on terror, or the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, or the “Reagan Revolution” and the the rise of the New Right. How did the US become so divided? Fault Lines offers a richly told, wide-angle history view toward an answer.
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Good overview of the past 45 years
- By Adam Shields on 02-26-19
By: Kevin M. Kruse, and others
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Why the Right Went Wrong
- Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond
- By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Why the Right Went Wrong offers a historical view of the right since the 1960s. Its core contention is that American conservatism and the Republican Party took a wrong turn when they adopted Barry Goldwater's worldview during and after the 1964 campaign. Since 1968, no conservative administration could live up to the rhetoric rooted in the Goldwater movement that began to reshape American politics 50 years ago.
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Outstanding, refreshing, inspiring
- By James Adams on 03-19-16
By: E. J. Dionne Jr.
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Resistance
- How Women Saved Democracy from Donald Trump
- By: Jennifer Rubin
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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In the tradition of Shattered and Game Change, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin provides an insider’s look at how women across the political spectrum carried a revolution to the ballot box and defeated Donald Trump, based on interviews with key figures such as Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Stacey Abrams, Nancy Pelosi, and many more.
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An excellent book
- By Gary on 02-02-22
By: Jennifer Rubin
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We Should Have Seen It Coming
- From Reagan to Trump - A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution
- By: Gerald F. Seib
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal chronicles the astonishing rise, climax, and decline of the conservative movement, from the election of Ronald Reagan to the Republican Party's takeover by Donald Trump - with a new introduction covering the 2020 election and the future of the GOP.
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Brilliant!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 11-04-20
By: Gerald F. Seib
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The Trump Century
- How Our President Changed the Course of History Forever
- By: Lou Dobbs
- Narrated by: Lou Dobbs
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Trump Century, the indomitable Lou Dobbs explains how Trump has steered the debate every day he has been in politics, greatly expanding what Washington thinks is possible. By 2016, the globalist elites demanded no one speak about limiting illegal immigration or securing our borders. The elites told you communist China would soon be like us, and the PC orthodoxy told you what you could or could not say. You were told America’s Middle Class could never grow again and wages would be stagnant into perpetuity. Trump reversed all of that.
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A dose of honest reality in the era of fake news.
- By Bobby K. Daugherty on 09-23-20
By: Lou Dobbs
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The Hardest Job in the World
- The American Presidency
- By: John Dickerson
- Narrated by: John Dickerson
- Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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The American presidency is in trouble. It has become overburdened, misunderstood, almost impossible to do. “The problems in the job unfolded before Donald Trump was elected, and the challenges of governing today will confront his successors”, writes John Dickerson. After all, the founders never intended for our system of checks and balances to have one superior Chief Magistrate, with Congress demoted to “the little brother who can’t keep up”.
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Couldn’t wait for this book!
- By David H. Lawrence XVII on 06-17-20
By: John Dickerson
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The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America
- The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series
- By: Thom Hartmann
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking his typically in-depth, historically informed view, Thom Hartmann asks: What if the Supreme Court didn't have the power to strike down laws? According to the Constitution, it doesn't. From the founding of the republic until 1803, the Supreme Court was the final court of appeals, as it was always meant to be. So where did the concept of judicial review start? As so much of modern American history, it began with the battle between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and with Marbury v. Madison.
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A must read to understand why voting is essential.
- By Brandon WIlliams on 10-05-19
By: Thom Hartmann
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What Were We Thinking
- A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
- By: Carlos Lozada
- Narrated by: Christian Barillas
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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It is an irony of our age that a man who rarely reads has unleashed an onslaught of books about his tenure and his time. Dissections of the white working class. Manifestos of political resistance. Works on identity, gender, and migration. Memoirs on race and protest. Revelations of White House mayhem. Warnings over the future of conservatism, progressivism, and of American democracy itself.
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Useful book
- By Kindle Customer on 11-22-20
By: Carlos Lozada
What listeners say about How America Lost Its Mind
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- Tom Anderson
- 02-16-20
An Unbiased Look at Our Political Mess
Excellent unbiased look at where we are today. Highly recommended. Middle of the road perspective.
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- Gennyfer Hanvey
- 02-01-20
Well melded information with clear perspective
This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.
It’s a Herculean task to provide an unbiased view of the current political culture in the United States. My personal bias leans left and while inexperienced some cognitive discomfort when Patterson gave examples of Democrats and progressives foibles, I imagine this book would be more uncomfortable for someone on the right to read. Still Patterson’s knowledgeable explanation of how we got here was very detailed, backed up with many examples, and relatively concise. While the conclusion was not bursting with hope and solutions, I ended up feeling less despair than I’d expected. We may climb out of this hole we’ve dug ourselves.
Peter Lerman’s reading was excellent. He has a rich professorial tone that lends itself to a lecture series style book. His pacing kept me from increasing the speed, a habit I’ve been employing lately with non-fiction.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Deedra
- 02-22-20
How America Lost its mind
I found this a very good,unbiased view of how we got to where we are today.It started before our current regime.Trump has only taken the bull by the horns and made America hate again.Around and around we go. Peter Lerman was a fine narrator. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Christine Newton
- 03-03-20
tough love
A perfect length for an audiobook describing problems and possible solutions for the polarization and hyper-partisanship that characterizes the United States these days. There's plenty of blame to go around and it will take mindfulness and hard work for future leaders to mend the divisions. But there's also plenty of room for self-reflection at the individual level, too. I don't want to fill up space here by blathering on about my personal insights and examples, so let's just say that there's a lot in this book to think about.
My favourite topic in the book is about tribalism ('us versus them') and how destructive that can be. During election campaigns, sure, sink to that level of competition. But once the election is over, you've got to put that behind you and move forward collaboratively. If there are sore losers and sore winners, what you end up with is cycles of aggression, defensiveness, and retaliation. When I hear that a political party's sole objective is to make the President a 'one-term' President, regardless of the merits of the incumbent's policiies, it smacks of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. (What kind of leadership example is that, to send to citizens of a country??)
My second favourite part of the book is the discussion of how factual news and op ed/punditry have blurred together. As a non-American, I didn't know the history and evolution of partisan broadcasting in the United States - it was very interesting to learn about that. I can appreciate that mainstream media is a business that caters to its target markets, but I can't imagine the government would reach the point where it imposes stricter objectivity restrictions on content. I suspect that thinks will get worse (e.g., someone will be egged on by a charismatic media personality and will commit a violent crime) before it gets better.
If I were to make one suggestion, I wish the author had spent more time speculating about the ultimate objectives of hyper-partisans. This book explains very well some of the causes and mechanisms that have enabled hyper-partisanship to thrive in today's political environment. But a piece that perplexes me is what the hyper-partisans hope to achieve. Do they want to eliminate the other party and be a one-party country? Because that sounds like a dictatorship and I don't think too many Americans would want that. Do hyper-partisans want to crush and demoralize their neighbours on the other side of the political fence, according them no dignity or respect? Or is it all just a game that unfortunately some people take a wee bit too seriously (with the hyper-partisans winking at us but some people aren't seeing the wink). I guess I'm wondering about the ultimate consequences of hyper-partisanship. I think the author would have some good insights and examples to share.
I enjoyed the narrator tremendously - there was, I felt, a good fit between the voice and the material. I'd recommend this book to others... but I suspect that the people who need to read it most wouldn't be much interested in reading it....
"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."
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- GoingGoingGone...
- 04-26-20
Political Power and the Influence of the Press
I found the book excellent. It was well argued, and for the most part fair in that, unlike many other books of its type, it's not looking to be "tribal". It is not a cover to cover cheering section for one or the other side, but rather seeks to be a cheering section for what America could be if it would be more aware of how the Press and politics have combined into a brew that undermines rather than builds our democracy.
That said, the book does tend to put its thumb on the scale for those who think the Obama Presidency was ideal, without properly assessing what it was about his presidency that brought about the backlash that brought President Trump forward. That doesn't mean there are no theories, rather, the ones put forward have the overall effect of suggesting that Obama and those who supported him had it right, and everyone else is either misperceiving what America should become, or need to be negotiated with so that they can be made a bit more comfortable and politically anesthetized while the America they want transitions into one that is, well, not really what they want.
So in not really taking on why conservatives want those things (other than saying they're being "nostalgic"), and why they fear the changes that are currently occurring in America, or even taking those fears seriously enough to imagine that they might be right more often than not, I don't think the author can really get to the bottom of why America has become a "crippled democracy" and this is where I think the book falters. He uses statistics, sometime misleadingly, as a proxy for properly describing what's going on. The numbers will only tell a small part of the story.
It's a thought-provoking and well crafted book, though, and it brings up some very good points. It was critical of both sides of the debate, but I felt some of his points were crafted to lead us to conclusions that were unwarranted and can have benefitted from further scrutiny. But I think the best message to take away is this - that if both sides want a better America, the time has come to start listening to each other. Really listening, not just trying to gainsay or engage in one-upmanship. There are reasons that America is undergoing a cultural upheaval, and there's just no way to put it to rest without each citizen, no matter what their political leaning, to engage with their neighbors rather than vicariously using politicians as our gladiators.
This book was obtained by me for no cost on the condition that I right my review.
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- Chester
- 01-22-20
Crippling our Democracy?
There is no question that our democracy is on very shaky grounds right now as the author clearly explains. Your leaning, right or left, is irrelevant in understanding the great fear we should all have today for the future of our country.
Unfortunately the fat lady has not sung yet on the downward slide of our democracy I am afraid and what faint hope offered here is today just a faint hope. The more people that read or listen to this, the brighter that hope might become.
Peter Lerman does a great job putting the proper sense of importance to these words.
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2 people found this helpful
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- buschfam
- 02-15-20
Enlightening
Lots of good things to think about. Many things brought to light that should be.
I was hoping this book would be more non-partisan. At times it seemed that the author was critical of both sides of the isle, but he did lean toward the left.
Narrator was very matter of fact and monotonous at times but a good fit for the content.
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- Margie
- 03-13-23
Relief in hearing a voice of reason....
I've listened to Dr. Patterson's course in U. S. Political Institutions a number of times. It amazes me at how little I understand the function, scope and magnitude of our government.... and I am certain that over 95% of US citizenry suffer from the same deficiency. So we are at the mercy of social media and the "news" commentary that assault us on a daily basis ....parading as truth and insight. In "How America Lost Its Mind" Dr. Patterson has clearly layed out the dilemma that faces us as a nation today. As a baby boomer leading the pack I received a large chunk of my knowledge "in the stacks" of my university library in a myriad of books and researched articles. The card catalog was my search engine. Today the vast amount of information at the end of my finger is mind boggling. But with it comes all kinds of distortions, falsehoods, and spins. From Dr. Patterson's course and this book I've learned that events really do have an impact on the direction in which we are moving as a country. Now that I've listened to this as an audiobook I am eager to purchase a hard copy so I can lightlight so many statements I would like to burn into my brain to share with my grandchildren. (Yes Avery, social studies and government class DO matter and are NOT boring ) Thank you Dr. Patterson, for taking time to write this insightful book and for teaching an excellent course on how our government works.
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