Lost: The Collapse of Morals in America: When Everything’s for Sale

by Brian Turner

The Collapse of Morals in America is a mirror held up to a nation that traded meaning for marketing. Through thirteen lanes of reflection, author Brian B. Turner examines how morality quietly unraveled across parenting, media, politics, work, and even technology.

This is not a history book. It is a wake-up call written in rhythm and reason. From “Just Say No” to influencer culture, from faith in government to faith in algorithms, Lost traces how progress, profit, and performance replaced principles.

Turner’s poetic prose moves between past and present, from the silence of small towns to the noise of social media feeds. Each chapter reveals how the sacred became negotiable and the human became mechanical.

But this book is not about despair. It is about rediscovery. In its final pages, Lost reminds readers that morality does not disappear, it drifts. And it waits for those willing to listen again in the quiet.

For readers of cultural critique, creative nonfiction, and social reflection, Lost asks a simple
What still holds when everything is for sale?

86 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2025

About the author

Brian Turner is the author of a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, and five collections of poetry— Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise; with The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem, and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook due out from Alice James Books in Fall, 2023. He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres. A musician, he’s written and recorded albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and American Undertow with The Retro Legion. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he’s received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.