American Dream, Global Nightmare

Ziauddin Sardar
Merryl Wyn Davies

UK £7.99,Canada $20.00,
UK Publication October 2004
ISBN 9781840465723
Paperback

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There is something deeply wrong with America. The American dream has become a global nightmare from which we all need to awake as quickly as possible.

The American Empire is now an unavoidable fact of life for the whole planet. In their previous book, Why Do People Hate America?, Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies looked at how the USA is seen around the world. In this, the hard-hitting sequel, they ask: how does America perceive itself? The myths that America believes in have dire consequences for people everywhere. American Dream, Global Nightmare examines the cultural delusions of America, and diagnoses the root of the problem as 'American psychosis', a grotesque and dangerous imbalance between fantasy and reality.

Propelled by its mythology, America pursues its dream relentlessly. Here, the authors expose the dark side of that fantasy: death, suffering, perpetual fear, an increasing divide between rich and poor, a squandering of the human future, and the relentless building of more and more pretexts for future wars.

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back to bed the authors of Why Do People Hate America? bring you a sequel to rock you awake! … Earnest and entertaining” The Times

‘As Wyn Davies gets into her stride, the anger grows. She talks of the ‘callous disregard for the lives of non-Americans’ and the listener, moved, must agree.’ The Observer

‘Anyone fretting about George W Bush's plans for further intervention in the Middle East will get scant comfort from this lively analysis of America's sense of "lethal righteousness". The land of the free has been deeply flawed from its inception, lectures Wyn Davies, making her point with a cutting analysis of its "largely bogus" ideas about the nation's "sacred text", the constitution. She and Sardar identify futher myths created by America's "cultural delusions " (including "ignorance is bliss" and "war is essential"), illustrating the points with some entertaining parallels with Hollywood films. This is an alarming study of the globe's "lone hyperpower".’ The Sunday Times

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Ziauddin Sardar is a prominent journalist and author. Prolific and polymathic, he is a regular contributor to the New Statesman and The Observer. He presented The Battle for Islam on BBC Two in September 2005. His most recent books are Desperately Seeking Paradise and Balti Britain (Granta).

See more books by: Ziauddin Sardar

Merryl Wyn Davies is a writer, anthropologist and former producer of religious programmes for the BBC.

See more books by: Merryl Wyn Davies