Choice Reviews
This book summarizes the author's interpretation of recent US history and explains his belief that the country took a wrong turn politically during the 1970s and 1980s. In this coda to his earlier Fantasyland (CH, Jan'18, 55-1830), best-selling author Andersen says the country was on the right track politically and economically from the New Deal of the 1930s until the fateful recent turn. Active government policies resulted in improvements in the American standard of living, and Americans' characteristic interest in the "new" fostered acceptance of beneficial changes. Wealthy and conservative people, however, capitalized on several convergent factors to influence change that benefited themselves at the expense of others during recent decades. Andersen begins with a brief review of American history until the 1960s, explains how liberalism reached its peak of influence during the 1970s before the counterrevolution began, and then recounts the wrong turn the country took during the 1980s and continuing into the 1990s. He finally surveys contemporary efforts he believes might change the country's political and economic trajectory in the future. Andersen's mostly entertaining text is not footnoted, but interested readers may consult sources and citations available on the author's website. Some sources are also listed in the bibliography. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers.
--J. P. Sanson, formerly, Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Jerry Purvis Sanson
formerly, Louisiana State University at Alexandria
Jerry Purvis Sanson Choice Reviews 59:03 November 2021 Copyright 2021 American Library Association.Kirkus Reviews
How inequality happened in America. Journalist, editor, magazine founder (Spy, Inside), and host of the public radio broadcast "Studio 360," Andersen builds on the political and cultural critique he offered in his last book with a timely, hard-hitting analysis of America's "hijacked, screwed-up political economy." "Whereas Fantasyland concerned Americans' centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangerous flowering since the 1960s," he writes, "Evil Geniuses chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business." Synthesizing many works on capitalism, inequality, greed, and corruption, Andersen focuses on the "hyperselfishness" that took hold in the 1970s, when economic equality was "at its peak." What Tom Wolfe called the "Me Decade" extended beyond personal behavior to infect the nation's economy, leading to "strategizing, funding, propagandizing, mobilizing, lobbyi ng, and institution-building" by big business, turning the U.S. political economy "into a winner-take-all casino economy." The author sees the '70s as a turning point in American life that gave rise to neoliberalism, a move toward deregulation of business, and a glorification of a culture of greed. "The anti-Establishment subjectivity and freedom to ignore experts and believe in make-believe that exploded in the '60s was normalized and spread during the '70s and beyond," he writes (especially during Reagan's presidency) and is in evidence today in a mistrust of government—regulations, taxes, oversight—and a nostalgia for some imagined, stable past. Andersen believes that change can occur, unrelated to partisan politics: He urges Americans to push for "goals that can seem radical—lots more power for workers and average citizens, optimizing the economy for all Americans rather than maximizing it for rich ones and corporations—but then being nondoctrinai r e about how we achieve the goals." A rousing call for desperately needed systemic transformation. Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
LJ Express Reviews
Since the 1980s, many national business policies and judicial rulings have been dictated by evil geniuses who have restructured the economy to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the disappearing middle class and the growing number of poor, writes Andersen (
PW Annex Reviews
In this sweeping jeremiad, journalist Andersen (coauthor,