The Terror Dream
Reviews
"Susan Faludi, as always, is simply stunning. With heroic acuity, she digs through the mythological debris of the Bush era to recover the dark fairytale—shades of white savagery on the early Frontier—that founds the vengeance fantasy we call the 'war on terrorism.'"
"No system has more completely failed us since 9/11 than the print and television media. The American public is too misinformed even to think of elementary oversight of its government. In painstaking and documented detail, Susan Faludi demonstrates that this was not just a matter of neglect but a failure of intent—the Sean Hannitys, Diane Sawyers, and network anchors misled us in service of an ideological agenda. Her chapter on Jessica Lynch is a tour de force of how the military-journalistic complex works. You cannot find a more eye-opening book to read."
"An important contribution to our understanding of the cultural and political reaction to 9/11, which shows how deeply ingrained beliefs about masculinity, femininity and sanctified violence have shaped our national identity, and our ways of responding to crisis."
"When the viciously misogynist al Qaeda attacked America, the mainstream media responded, strangely enough, with a call for a revival of manly men, frail females, and traditional domesticity. In The Terror Dream, our premiere cultural reporter exposes the Backlash and offers a fascinating explanation of why 9/11 led to such a perverse retreat from our own values. This is a book that had to be written, and only Susan Faludi could do it so brilliantly and engrossingly."
"In this bold and courageous book, Susan Faludi peels away the veneer of post-9/11 bravado to expose our collective national psyche, bringing us face to face with our nation's innermost fears and fantasies. The Terror Dream unmasks the Lone Rangers running our nation and their loyal media Tontos who hark back to a mythic frontier where men were men and women were victims. Faludi shows how the revival of these myths since 9/11 has made us weaker and less secure, and the world a more dangerous place."
"If you are wondering what's come over America since 9/11, this is the book you've been waiting for. The Terror Dream does for 9/11 and its effects what Backlash did for women in the '90s. Once again, Susan Faludi combines her unparalleled gifts for research, reporting and, of course, great writing, with an arresting and wholly original thesis."
"Blistering and brilliant, The Terror Dream is cultural criticism at its best."
"Susan Faludi is an eloquent researcher and a remarkable journalist whose response to social crisis is invariably shrewd and original. Now she gives us a work of eye-opening documentation of how American culture, instead of being changed by 9/11, has absorbed it into its own mythic sense of self. The Terror Dream is a bold, brave book that joins the literature of dissent during one of the most dangerous, flag-waving moments in American history."
“In a Susan Faludi book… you can be assured that the idea will be every bit as fetching and dashing as any fictional character you can name. A first rate journalist, she backs up her theories with research, with rigorous analysis, which makes her work the opposite of the usual run of ‘idea’ books... The Terror Dream is an ambitious engagement with a provocative idea.”
“Any list of important books about that dark day will now have to include Faludi’s sharp and spirited account of gender politics in the feverish aftermath. Her overall argument is powerful, convincing and very much in need of articulation by a bestselling author who can commandeer a public pulpit.”
“Susan Faludi’s must-read new book… is a lively, important argument, a discussion highly worth having as we wake from our own terror dream.”
“A relentless reporter, an unapologetic feminist, and a brilliant scourge… feminism is her compass and her lens, her furnace and her fire. Feminism has made possible this splendid provocation of a book, levitating to keep company with Hunter Thompson’s fear and loathing, Leslie Fielder’s love and death and Edmund Wilson’s patriotic gore.”
“Faludi’s third book provides an unexpected but incisive assessment of the post-September 11th era.”
“Faludi’s talent, though, isn’t just reflecting the zeitgeist; her ideas often shape the dialogue.”
“Compelling… The Terror Dream not only instructs the reader in how to parse the often puzzling turns in the media and popular culture since 9/11, but also reveals a deep and abiding narrative that has lain underneath the very conception of how we view ourselves as ‘Americans.’”
“Her criticism of the media gullibility is well deserved.”
“The Terror Dream is the most thought-provoking and eye-opening book yet about this nation's reaction to 9/11.”
“A lively analysis of the mythmaking that substituted for the work of reflection that 9/11 required.”
“Brilliant and forceful… Offers a disturbing, culturally explosive explanation of the myths that inform today’s war on terror.”
“Provocative… stunning… Whether you resist her argument of buy it wholesale, you’ll find yourself thinking harder about the social fallout of 9/11.”
“Faludi has an eye for the tellingly symbolic image and weirdly apt coincidence, and an ear for what resonates in the structures of the American mythos.”
“A brilliant, unsentimental, often darkly humorous account of America’s nervous breakdown after 9/11.”
“Rich, incisive analysis of the surreality of American life in the wake of 9/11… Brilliant, illuminating, and essential.”
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