Is America doomed? Kurt Anderson will be here to discuss his new book, Evil Geniuses,

The Unmaking of America, A Recent History.

What's the story behind John Hersey's monumental book, Hiroshima? Leslie M. M. Bloom will be

here to talk about Fallout, the Hiroshima cover-up, and the reporter who revealed it to the

world. Plus, we'll talk about what we and the water world are reading. This is the Bookerview

podcast from The New York Times. It's August 28th. I'm Pamela Paul.

Kurt Anderson joins us now. He has a new book out. It's called Evil Geniuses, The Unmaking of America,

A Recent History. Kurt, thanks for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. All right, so your

previous book to this was Fantasyland. I feel like there's a connection. Where did you leave

off in that book and pick up in your new book? There's definitely a connection. They really

amount to a two-volume history of the screwing up of America of the last half century.

Fantasyland was about how this chronic condition in America of the weakness for the irrational

and magical thinking and entertaining lies turned into this acute illness after having been a

centuries-long chronic illness the last 50 years, and thus the president of the United States

as the poster boy for that. This is a different story. This is not a spontaneous or organic

problem that I'm talking about here. It's about the paradigm shift and hijacking of our political

economy that happened starting 50 years ago by what the people I call Evil Geniuses. It's this very

rational, very specific, very strategic, long war that had the effect in a hundred different ways

of making the majority of Americans worse off. So, if Fantasyland talked about America's

propensity to believe in nonsensical, illogical things, it sounds like Evil Geniuses is this kind of

why the efforts that were made on the part of institutions and individuals that have led to that

kind of thinking? No, actually not that led to that kind of thinking. It's a holy different thing.

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