The Undertow
Scenes from a Slow Civil War
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4.3 • 24개의 평가
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- US$14.99
출판사 설명
A New York Times Bestseller
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction • One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2023 • One of The New Republic's Best Books of 2023
"A riveting, vividly detailed collage of political and moral derangement in America." —Joseph O’Neill, New York Times Book Review
One of America’s finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart.
An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies—sometimes realities—of violence.
Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war—a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened—love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.
Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.
Exploring a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our precarious present that brings to light a decade of American failures as well as a vision for American possibility.
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Reporter and photographer Sharlet (The Family) probes the intersections of faith and right-wing politics in these meditative essays. Profiling Trump supporters who believe they must save the nation from unseen evil forces, churchgoers who hope to emulate the lavish lifestyles of their pastors, and "manosphere" bloggers who insist that the most oppressed group in modern America is the white cisgender male, Sharlet notes a shared desire among his subjects to achieve the greatness they feel they've been denied. Trump and his followers subscribe to "the prosperity gospel, the American religion of winning," which has roots in Norman Vincent Peale's "applied Christianity," while Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr., leader of Vous Church in Miami, sells a specific, celebrity-infused brand of "hipster Christendom," which encourages followers to "bask in his glamour and become ever so slightly glamorous themselves." Elsewhere, Sharlet discusses how Ashli Babbitt, who was killed during the January 6 Capitol riot, has become a modern-day martyr for the right. An excellent interviewer, Sharlet elicits eye-opening commentary from Trump rallygoers, militia members, QAnon conspiracists, teenage pro-choice protestors, and more. Poetic descriptions of America's landscape and history punctuate Sharlet's unsettling insights into the undercurrents of fear, isolation, and anger coursing through the country. It's a jaw-dropping portrait of a country on the edge. Photos.
