Age of Folly: America Abandons Its Democracy - Paperback

by Lewis H. Lapham (Author)

"In twenty-five years of imperial adventure, [Lapham believes that] America has laid waste to its principles of democracy. The ... march of folly steps off at the end of the Cold War, in an era when delusions of omnipotence allowed the market to climb to virtual heights, while society was divided between the selfish and frightened rich and the increasingly debt-ridden and angry poor. The new millennium saw the democratic election of an American president nullified by the Supreme Court, and the pretender launching a wasteful, vainglorious, and never-ending war on terror, doomed to end in defeat and the loss of America's prestige abroad. All this culminates in the sunset swamp of the 2016 election"--

Author Biography

Lewis H. Lapham is the founding Editor of Lapham's Quarterly and the Editor Emeritus of Harper's. His columns received the National Magazine Award in 1995 for exhibiting "an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity," and, in 2002, the Thomas Paine Journalism Award. He was inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame in 2007. His other books include Money and Class in America, Fortune's Child, Imperial Masquerade, The Wish for Kings, Hotel America, Waiting for the Barbarians, Theater of War, The Agony of Mammon, Gag Rule, and Pretensions to Empire.