Empire of Illusion

From a bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, a scathing polemic against the spectacle-obsessed culture that has taken over American life

“A trenchantly argued critique of the near-destruction of the American Dream by unfettered capitalism.” —Philadelphia Inquirer

An instant bestseller, Chris Hedges’s Empire of Illusion is one of the most striking and unsettling explorations of illusion and fantasy in contemporary American culture. Traveling to the ringside of professional wrestling bouts at Madison Square Garden, to a pornography convention in Las Vegas, and to academic conferences held by positive psychologists—who claim to be able to engineer happiness—Hedges chronicles the encroachment of artifice and propaganda in all corners of American life. He exposes the mechanisms used to divert us from confronting the economic, environmental, political, and moral collapse around us. A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies, Hedges argues, and we are dying now.

• “A trenchantly argued critique of the near-destruction of the American Dream by unfettered capitalism.” 
  Philadelphia Inquirer
• “Each chapter of Empire of Illusion makes a strong case for how different illusions...taken together are destroying the American mind, culture and the nation itself.” 
  National Post
• “[Hedges’s] cultural diagnoses have become more prescient and more ubiquitous with time.” 
  San Antonio Express-News
• “Remarkable, bracing and highly moral, Empire of Illusion is Hedges’ lament for his nation.” 
  Maclean’s
• “Impassioned, mournful . . . A welcome contribution to the field of cultural studies.” 
  Hemispheric Institute
• “Hedges is a fan of big ideas, and in Empire of Illusion, he draws upon the culture of professional wrestling and pornography, the elite university, positive psychology and the financial crisis to fashion a social theory of everything.” 
  Winnipeg Free Press
• “Thoroughly documented and written in a measured but take-no-prisoners tone. . . . It’s bound to stir up its share of interest-generating controversy.” 
  Booklist