The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War [L0035]

2023 - HCDJ Excellent condition. A National Book Critics Circle Finalist for Nonfiction An Instant New York Times Bestseller. One of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2023 One of The New Republic's Best Books of 2023. One of America's finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart. One of America's finest reporters and essayists explores the powerful currents beneath the roiled waters of a nation coming apart. Nominally Christian churches glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while others celebrate an ecstatic indulgence in hate, citing Scripture while preparing for civil war. Lonely men gather to rage against women. There, too, 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. Both political inquiry and meditation, as poetic as it is profound and disturbing, The Undertow captures a decade of growing division: roughly 2011-2021. Jeff Sharlet examines currents of gender, faith, and money that brought us to the "Trumpocene," and finally, explores a geography of grief and uncertainty in the midst of plague and rising fascism. Beginning and closing with freedom songs of the past whose critique of American failures are nonetheless a vision of American possibility, The Undertow is a necessary reckoning with our present, precarious condition.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "This is an extremely important book, and it may be the first truly great book about the Trump Era. I can't recommend it enough."; "This book is not only superbly written, but takes us deep into the mental and emotional landscape of that group of people in our country who feel disenfranchised, marginalized, and fearful of their place in a diverse society. I remember reading A Walk Across America a few decades ago. My how those travelogues have taken a dark turn! And yet, so many have cried out for someone to help us make sense of the cultural sinkhole that has arisen which has so deeply divided us. An important read."; "Sharlet does two things in this book that almost no one else does or can do. First, he brings empathy and compassion to his subjects even when he is vehemently at odds with their beliefs and perceptions. The second thing he brings to this topic, which may be even more important than his empathy, is his ability to see beyond the facts to the dreams. As a lifelong writer about religion, he is conscious of and concerned about the belief systems, the ineffable concerns, the concepts that don't go into words. I don't think I've ever read anything else about my opponents that goes so deep and -- like everyone else who truly goes deep -- Sharlet is humble about his own role in the story."