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Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
In a sweeping work of reportage set over the course of 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Fountain recounts a surreal year of politics and an exploration of the third American existential crisis
Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a “burning” of the old order as America attempts to remake itself.
Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.
In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation. Beautiful Country Burn Again is a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.
Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a “burning” of the old order as America attempts to remake itself.
Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump.
In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation. Beautiful Country Burn Again is a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.
445 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 25, 2018
184 people are currently reading
1820 people want to read
About the author
Ben Fountain
14 books372 followersBen Fountain's fiction has appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All Story, and he has been awarded an O. Henry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. He lives with his wife and their two children in Dallas, Texas.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 131 reviews
July 9, 2018
Ben Fountain, author of the excellent, prize-winning novel "Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk," takes us back to the absolute clusterfuck of the presidential campaign year of 2016. A gifted wordsmith who combines the detailed observational qualities of Tom Wolfe (minus the tons of exclamation marks), the righteous sense of injustice of Hunter S. Thompson (minus the drugs and alcohol), and the dead-on, sometimes scatological, character assessments of Matt Taibbi (“Donald Trump, plainly and simply, is full of shit.”), Fountain interweaves a series of thought-provoking essays together with an ongoing “Book of Days” recitation of the actual surreal monthly news (major and minor). His compelling argument is that America is facing a crisis that portends—even cries out for—a third reinvention (with the Civil War and Great Depression signaling the first two). This is not a Trump-bashing book: yes, Trump the candidate is honestly, accurately, and often humorously pegged as a serial liar, bully, and racist (pulling back the curtain on The Great Oz, and who hasn't?), but Hillary Clinton also takes her fair share of knocks here for being a part of the New Democrat movement that embraced corporate America at the expense of the working class. Ultimately, Fountain very persuasively and eloquently warns that democracy itself is at stake due to increasing income inequality, insular xenophobia, and resurgent racism (shamefully more openly acceptable thanks to Trump). Offering a timely and incisive critique of the American present that also makes an appeal to our better angels, Fountain--like James Baldwin before him--recognizes that the way forward will require a new revolution.
August 20, 2019
“America is various. It refuses to be all one thing or all the other.”
― Ben Fountain, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
Review to follow.
I have not finished this yet. It is a big book and I am reading it slowly and may not be done for some time. I love Ben Fountain's writing.
I wish HE was our President.
― Ben Fountain, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
Review to follow.
I have not finished this yet. It is a big book and I am reading it slowly and may not be done for some time. I love Ben Fountain's writing.
I wish HE was our President.
December 17, 2018
Ben Fountain, at the behest of The Guardian, is sent out on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the 2016 US Presidential election and finds himself at the Quicken Loans Arena for the Republican National Convention. Here he finds stern warnings against tennis balls. Tennis balls are definitely not allowed on the convention floor. Same goes for water guns, toy guns, tape, rope, umbrellas with metal tips and a dozen other items that are considered verboten. What are allowed are guns. In the open carry state of Ohio, guns are allowed on the convention floor. Clearly America has lost its mind.
It's Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail and while Fountain saves much of his head-shaking ire for Trump, he's a non-partisan critic assessing Hillary as someone completely incapable of connecting with the middle-class and Ted Cruz who is determined to out-Jesus everyone else. He posits that the United States finds itself at a critical crossroads, one they've only been twice before during the Civil War and the Great Depression. In all cases, the country has had to completely reinvent itself to survive as a democracy.
Fountain is one hell of a writer. In our current breakneck news cycle that sees fresh new dumpster fires everyday, looking back those few short years seems to make the most sense. It is an arms length view that still seems horribly prescient. Full length video review here: https://youtu.be/uQ1HHhujnXY
It's Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail and while Fountain saves much of his head-shaking ire for Trump, he's a non-partisan critic assessing Hillary as someone completely incapable of connecting with the middle-class and Ted Cruz who is determined to out-Jesus everyone else. He posits that the United States finds itself at a critical crossroads, one they've only been twice before during the Civil War and the Great Depression. In all cases, the country has had to completely reinvent itself to survive as a democracy.
Fountain is one hell of a writer. In our current breakneck news cycle that sees fresh new dumpster fires everyday, looking back those few short years seems to make the most sense. It is an arms length view that still seems horribly prescient. Full length video review here: https://youtu.be/uQ1HHhujnXY
September 17, 2018
POLITICS/GOVERNMENT
Ben Fountain
Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
Ecco Books
Hardcover, 978-0-0626-8884-2 (also available as an e-book, audiobook, and large-print paperback), 448 pgs., $27.99
September 25, 2018
“Nautonomy: the asymmetrical production and distribution of life chances which limit and erode the possibilities of political participation.” —David Held, Democracy and the Global Order
Ben Fountain pulls no punches. “This wasn’t Democrats versus Republicans so much as the sad, psychotic, and vengeful in the national life producing a strange mutation,” he writes, “a creature comprised of degenerate political logic.”
Where were you when you heard the news? You remember, don’t you, whether you thought the news was fantastic or catastrophic? I do; I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a 787 bound for New Delhi. So, naturally, at 9 p.m. EST I began pestering the cabin crew for election news. The pilot resorted to announcing updates and when it was done, when the result was announced, I cried.
I write this review on the day Paul Manafort pleads guilty to conspiracy against the United States.
Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution is the first book of nonfiction from Ben Fountain, a former attorney, whose fiction is famous. You may not be familiar with Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, a collection of short stories which won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2007, but you cannot have avoided Fountain’s novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013 and became a film directed by Ang Lee — Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
“I was having feelings. They weren’t good feelings,” Fountain writes. “By Thanksgiving, 2015, these feelings had crystalized into a sense that something new and ugly was afoot in the land of the famously free.” So, The Guardian newspaper dispatched him to the campaign trail to “figure out what the hell was going on out there.” The result was a series of essays for the newspaper which eventually became Beautiful Country Burn Again.
Much more than a simple expansion of that series of essays, this book is a triumph of reporting — a synthesis of research, interviews, observation, experience, and analysis producing a vital mix of politics, economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history. Fountain contextualizes the result with a “Book of Days,” preceding each chapter, which sets the global stage upon which the events of that chapter played themselves out.
Fountain explores and explains and distills into what he calls the “American anthropology,” which is basically this: If we believe freedom is a finite thing, then the perception of a loss of freedom necessarily means that someone else has gained more freedom by taking it from us, and the less freedom you have, the more likely you are to be exploited economically. Ergo, “the American anthropology, the two horns of a bloody dilemma on which the democratic experiment has balanced for 240 years,” Fountain writes. “Profit proportionate to freedom; plunder correlative to subjugation.” If the boot is on my neck now then it must have been removed from someone else’s neck.
“Twice in its history the United States has had to reinvent itself,” Fountain writes, “in order to survive as a plausibly genuine constitutional democracy.” Those instances were the Civil War and the Great Depression. In the first instance, “the land literally burned … either the country would be reinvented as a profoundly different social order — with a redistribution of freedom … a resetting of the values in the freedom-profits-plunder equation — or it would be broken in two.”
The Great Depression forced a second reckoning: FDR’s New Deal countered what Fountain describes as “the threat that unbridled industrial capitalism posed for democracy.” In other words, if you are owned by your employer, with no bargaining power and no safety net if you fall, you are a slave in “a new kind of bondage, a shell democracy that maintained the forms of political equality while abetting an economic system that denied the great mass of people meaningful agency over their lives.”
Fountain believes we are now faced with the choice of a third reinvention or the death of the American Dream, in essence a crisis point of existential threat no less pivotal than the two previous reinventions.
As Jon Meacham, historian and author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (and many other books), says, “Sometimes it takes a novelist to capture a world gone mad, and it’s difficult to imagine a better match for our times than Ben Fountain.” Agreed. Fountain has examined the symptoms, analyzed the data, and offered a diagnosis of what ails us: “Fear is the herpes of American politics: the symptoms bloom and fade, but the virus never dies.” (Thanks for that image.)
If you’ve been paying attention, there is no new information in Beautiful Country Burn Again; if you haven’t been paying attention, then brace yourselves. Reminding me of Hunter S. Thompson without the ’ludes, Fountain writes in a colloquial style, telling unvarnished home-truths with an outraged, acerbic wit. He has a gift for getting at the essence of a thing, recognizing Trump as a combination of J.R. Ewing and Tony Soprano, his presidency a reality-TV program taken to its logical extreme.
Fountain conducts a consciousness-raising session and a deep-dive of a history lesson in electoral politics. He demonstrates cause and effect in clear, concise, and persuasive prose—no magic here. No one escapes; Fountain takes the Republicans to task as well as Democrats, closing Beautiful Country Burn Again in urgent tones with an inspiring moral case for what could be. Don’t skip the footnotes; they include authorial commentary, sometimes in French, as well as the citations.
The Fire Next Time, The Fire This Time, Beautiful Country Burn Again. Possibly the most chilling sentence in Fountain’s new book is, “This may be the most powerful medicine in politics, the leader who delivers a man to his natural self.” Is the result of the 2016 election a product of our natural selves? I do not want this to be who we are.
As disturbing and enraging as Fountain’s subject is, it’s a pleasure to read long-form journalism by a gifted fiction writer. I hope he does it again.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
Ben Fountain
Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution
Ecco Books
Hardcover, 978-0-0626-8884-2 (also available as an e-book, audiobook, and large-print paperback), 448 pgs., $27.99
September 25, 2018
“Nautonomy: the asymmetrical production and distribution of life chances which limit and erode the possibilities of political participation.” —David Held, Democracy and the Global Order
Ben Fountain pulls no punches. “This wasn’t Democrats versus Republicans so much as the sad, psychotic, and vengeful in the national life producing a strange mutation,” he writes, “a creature comprised of degenerate political logic.”
Where were you when you heard the news? You remember, don’t you, whether you thought the news was fantastic or catastrophic? I do; I was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on a 787 bound for New Delhi. So, naturally, at 9 p.m. EST I began pestering the cabin crew for election news. The pilot resorted to announcing updates and when it was done, when the result was announced, I cried.
I write this review on the day Paul Manafort pleads guilty to conspiracy against the United States.
Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution is the first book of nonfiction from Ben Fountain, a former attorney, whose fiction is famous. You may not be familiar with Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, a collection of short stories which won the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2007, but you cannot have avoided Fountain’s novel, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2013 and became a film directed by Ang Lee — Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
“I was having feelings. They weren’t good feelings,” Fountain writes. “By Thanksgiving, 2015, these feelings had crystalized into a sense that something new and ugly was afoot in the land of the famously free.” So, The Guardian newspaper dispatched him to the campaign trail to “figure out what the hell was going on out there.” The result was a series of essays for the newspaper which eventually became Beautiful Country Burn Again.
Much more than a simple expansion of that series of essays, this book is a triumph of reporting — a synthesis of research, interviews, observation, experience, and analysis producing a vital mix of politics, economics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and history. Fountain contextualizes the result with a “Book of Days,” preceding each chapter, which sets the global stage upon which the events of that chapter played themselves out.
Fountain explores and explains and distills into what he calls the “American anthropology,” which is basically this: If we believe freedom is a finite thing, then the perception of a loss of freedom necessarily means that someone else has gained more freedom by taking it from us, and the less freedom you have, the more likely you are to be exploited economically. Ergo, “the American anthropology, the two horns of a bloody dilemma on which the democratic experiment has balanced for 240 years,” Fountain writes. “Profit proportionate to freedom; plunder correlative to subjugation.” If the boot is on my neck now then it must have been removed from someone else’s neck.
“Twice in its history the United States has had to reinvent itself,” Fountain writes, “in order to survive as a plausibly genuine constitutional democracy.” Those instances were the Civil War and the Great Depression. In the first instance, “the land literally burned … either the country would be reinvented as a profoundly different social order — with a redistribution of freedom … a resetting of the values in the freedom-profits-plunder equation — or it would be broken in two.”
The Great Depression forced a second reckoning: FDR’s New Deal countered what Fountain describes as “the threat that unbridled industrial capitalism posed for democracy.” In other words, if you are owned by your employer, with no bargaining power and no safety net if you fall, you are a slave in “a new kind of bondage, a shell democracy that maintained the forms of political equality while abetting an economic system that denied the great mass of people meaningful agency over their lives.”
Fountain believes we are now faced with the choice of a third reinvention or the death of the American Dream, in essence a crisis point of existential threat no less pivotal than the two previous reinventions.
As Jon Meacham, historian and author of Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (and many other books), says, “Sometimes it takes a novelist to capture a world gone mad, and it’s difficult to imagine a better match for our times than Ben Fountain.” Agreed. Fountain has examined the symptoms, analyzed the data, and offered a diagnosis of what ails us: “Fear is the herpes of American politics: the symptoms bloom and fade, but the virus never dies.” (Thanks for that image.)
If you’ve been paying attention, there is no new information in Beautiful Country Burn Again; if you haven’t been paying attention, then brace yourselves. Reminding me of Hunter S. Thompson without the ’ludes, Fountain writes in a colloquial style, telling unvarnished home-truths with an outraged, acerbic wit. He has a gift for getting at the essence of a thing, recognizing Trump as a combination of J.R. Ewing and Tony Soprano, his presidency a reality-TV program taken to its logical extreme.
Fountain conducts a consciousness-raising session and a deep-dive of a history lesson in electoral politics. He demonstrates cause and effect in clear, concise, and persuasive prose—no magic here. No one escapes; Fountain takes the Republicans to task as well as Democrats, closing Beautiful Country Burn Again in urgent tones with an inspiring moral case for what could be. Don’t skip the footnotes; they include authorial commentary, sometimes in French, as well as the citations.
The Fire Next Time, The Fire This Time, Beautiful Country Burn Again. Possibly the most chilling sentence in Fountain’s new book is, “This may be the most powerful medicine in politics, the leader who delivers a man to his natural self.” Is the result of the 2016 election a product of our natural selves? I do not want this to be who we are.
As disturbing and enraging as Fountain’s subject is, it’s a pleasure to read long-form journalism by a gifted fiction writer. I hope he does it again.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
November 18, 2018
Beautifully written with a clear eye and commitment to facts. Also, we're fucked and I'm super depressed now.
October 16, 2024
This was a really good chronology of the 2016 election. Much better than I expected. Fountain assesses the moods of the country. Month by month Fountain chronicled the goings on in the campaigns and the current events of that month. Pepper in there were some opinion pieces about both candidates. I loved how this book flowed with him starting out with an intermission on each month detailing the current events, then went into what was happening within each campaign and the actions that month that specifically propelled the election of Trump.
Fountain was not a fan of either candidate and didn't hide his contempt for both. But I found that part of the insight into the book. A context representative of what I believe was the so called "informed voter" of that time. There was a malaise in 2016 that I think he captures well. What he also captures well is my perceptions of what I'd refer to as the white male disposition. In his writings I saw a contemptuousness towards Hilary Clinton ostensibly because of her wealth and privilege, but brimming with an undercurrent of misogyny. He was also contemptuous of Trump as well but differently. For example, he was more contemptuous with Trump for being so vacuous and devoid of substance and intellect. Yet Trump is every bit as wealthy and privileged as Clinton. What was irredeemable in Clinton was just fine for Trump. I feel like this is reflective of the way it felt during that time for much of the country. Fountain is left leaning, but with "midwestern" sensibilities. I kind of got the "obviously Trump is unqualified, but Clinton is the other option so, six of one half dozen of the other" vibe which I believe was representative of a lot of Americans. Clinton only marginally better. Retrospectively that's an absurd proposition, but that to my recollection is the way that it seemed at the time. It was a particularly interesting lens to look through in 2024 in Trump's 3rd election bid. Some of the mood feels very familiar, but also very different this time. For one thing, two old, white men are running.
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. Ron Butler was excellent!
Fountain was not a fan of either candidate and didn't hide his contempt for both. But I found that part of the insight into the book. A context representative of what I believe was the so called "informed voter" of that time. There was a malaise in 2016 that I think he captures well. What he also captures well is my perceptions of what I'd refer to as the white male disposition. In his writings I saw a contemptuousness towards Hilary Clinton ostensibly because of her wealth and privilege, but brimming with an undercurrent of misogyny. He was also contemptuous of Trump as well but differently. For example, he was more contemptuous with Trump for being so vacuous and devoid of substance and intellect. Yet Trump is every bit as wealthy and privileged as Clinton. What was irredeemable in Clinton was just fine for Trump. I feel like this is reflective of the way it felt during that time for much of the country. Fountain is left leaning, but with "midwestern" sensibilities. I kind of got the "obviously Trump is unqualified, but Clinton is the other option so, six of one half dozen of the other" vibe which I believe was representative of a lot of Americans. Clinton only marginally better. Retrospectively that's an absurd proposition, but that to my recollection is the way that it seemed at the time. It was a particularly interesting lens to look through in 2024 in Trump's 3rd election bid. Some of the mood feels very familiar, but also very different this time. For one thing, two old, white men are running.
4.5ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. Ron Butler was excellent!
October 18, 2018
This book was kinda a hot mess in the way it was written and organized. I had wanted to learn about/hear the author's reflection of the country's state today - as in his analysis and opinions. But 50% of the book were just recounting events that happen (literally listing out facts) in the 'Book of Days' chapters and another 30% were just pure quotes from different passages, news reels, and speeches. I don't want to come here to reread someone's speech even if you demonstrate the speaker's intonation through all caps. I can just watch the youtube video of it and get a better sense. I am here to read your analysis.
This book to me is how I would write an essay if I had to hit a character/word minimum but didn't have enough to say so I just picked the longest quotes to include. When Fountain did get to his analysis - it was good. I found the chapters - Trump Rising, Two American Dreams, A Familiar Spirit - interesting. While the Book of Days chapters did serve as a reminder how shitty things have become and what had happened, it might be I'm reading this book to close to the actual events that I've lived through as well, but it just seemed redundant to me. If all those chapters were taken out, this book could have a better, succinct, essay.
This book to me is how I would write an essay if I had to hit a character/word minimum but didn't have enough to say so I just picked the longest quotes to include. When Fountain did get to his analysis - it was good. I found the chapters - Trump Rising, Two American Dreams, A Familiar Spirit - interesting. While the Book of Days chapters did serve as a reminder how shitty things have become and what had happened, it might be I'm reading this book to close to the actual events that I've lived through as well, but it just seemed redundant to me. If all those chapters were taken out, this book could have a better, succinct, essay.
December 24, 2018
I did enjoy this book, although I think the cover has some false advertising. This book is really an analysis of the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, putting into context with historical background. The first hundred pages or so were just the author describing four rallies he went to prior to the Iowa caucus (one each for Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz) and I thought that part could have been about half the length and still had as much impact - so, if you are getting bogged down in the beginning, just skip to the next chapter and it'll go a lot quicker.
Ben Fountain points out the racial overtones of this election, the Democratic Party's failure to come down to earth and pay attention to income inequality, and most of all, our disenfranchisement by a system he refers to as "nautonomy," a term which refers to a system of government in which we all have legal rights on paper but in reality, only a small elite has any true voice in government - no matter what the rest of us do, it has very little effect. We can start a petition, run for office, have a protest, boycott something, but even if we do all of this, we have far less control than someone who is part of that wealthy elite. He gives a lot of credit to the founding fathers for the documents they wrote which this country is supposedly based on, but I think too much credit is given because he doesn't seem to go into how even in their lifetimes those ideals were not really lived up to, least of all due to the fact that many of those founding fathers were slave owners and took part in the genocide of indigenous peoples.
This book would be an excellent resource for anyone who is trying to understand the 2016 elections. Even though I lived through it, it brought a lot of that year back to me, most of it unpleasant memories of vitriolic interactions with complete strangers, especially while I was flyering for Jill Stein downtown. It had some weaknesses, as mentioned above, and it also did not talk about third parties (Libertarians or Greens) much at all except for mentioning them two or three times, but I did think most of his analysis was correct, and I felt that he did go to the root of the problem, which is that we are not really in a democracy. I wish there had been more writing about rebellion and revolution, since the title implied that was what the book was about, but I did think this was a solid analysis of what happened in that election and I would say it was worth reading.
Ben Fountain points out the racial overtones of this election, the Democratic Party's failure to come down to earth and pay attention to income inequality, and most of all, our disenfranchisement by a system he refers to as "nautonomy," a term which refers to a system of government in which we all have legal rights on paper but in reality, only a small elite has any true voice in government - no matter what the rest of us do, it has very little effect. We can start a petition, run for office, have a protest, boycott something, but even if we do all of this, we have far less control than someone who is part of that wealthy elite. He gives a lot of credit to the founding fathers for the documents they wrote which this country is supposedly based on, but I think too much credit is given because he doesn't seem to go into how even in their lifetimes those ideals were not really lived up to, least of all due to the fact that many of those founding fathers were slave owners and took part in the genocide of indigenous peoples.
This book would be an excellent resource for anyone who is trying to understand the 2016 elections. Even though I lived through it, it brought a lot of that year back to me, most of it unpleasant memories of vitriolic interactions with complete strangers, especially while I was flyering for Jill Stein downtown. It had some weaknesses, as mentioned above, and it also did not talk about third parties (Libertarians or Greens) much at all except for mentioning them two or three times, but I did think most of his analysis was correct, and I felt that he did go to the root of the problem, which is that we are not really in a democracy. I wish there had been more writing about rebellion and revolution, since the title implied that was what the book was about, but I did think this was a solid analysis of what happened in that election and I would say it was worth reading.
November 8, 2018
Huge fan of Mr Fountain and his writing story thus far. This is a collection of articles written for the Guardian, so it suffers from that just in terms of not having an overarching narrative or conclusion that connects it all together. Where it excels is in its language, uncompromising and unwavering in its evisceration of both the banking sector ala Taibbi and good old fashioned American paranoia ala Hunter Thompson.
Really enjoyed the foot notes and bibliography as well. A lot of good sources and things to add to the to-read shelf. Definitely will be moving up all of Didion’s work, as Fountain is a fan and cites her frequently.
Really enjoyed the foot notes and bibliography as well. A lot of good sources and things to add to the to-read shelf. Definitely will be moving up all of Didion’s work, as Fountain is a fan and cites her frequently.
October 28, 2018
Whether you’re Pro or Anti-Trump, 2016 was an interesting year in American politics. Ben Fountain attempts to capture that with a series of essays about that year and what they could mean for the US of A. Great read. Highly recommend.
November 4, 2018
Fountain utilizes historical context alongside a writer's eye for detail to create an incredibly compelling analysis of how we arrived at Trump and everything that goes with him. If your library doesn't have this book immediately available, buy it. You won't regret it.
September 4, 2018
Brilliant mind, acerbic wit, dark humor, inspiring calls to action, reads like a modern play on Hunter S. Thompson's Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
October 11, 2018
Great collection of essays and articles of the sad state of affairs created in 2016 and following. Some excellent analysis of what has happened to get us to this place. A bit depressing....
November 8, 2018
Insightful and sharp. I need to memorize sections so that impress people with my astute observations about American politics.
November 17, 2018
Yes he is a great author but that sweeping sensationalist garble tends to be a bit much after awhile. I was also deeply perplexed and offended that such a “progressive” book would use the word “spaz” (pg. 31) maybe hoping the sensationalism and shock of it would fit with his hyperactive, shockjock writing. I read that and was like “wtf he could’ve just used the word ‘spasm.’”. Well, 30 pages later he uses the word spasm. I was like, “wow, thanks for ditching the ableism but dude you have a strange fixation please talk to someone”. I’m guessing the author (as a child) knew someone on the playground with CP and found them curious but not compelling enough to include in play, and this has worked into some sort of boxed-up complex. Nothing like exhibiting superiority over a marginalized group while hating on those exhibiting superiority over marginalized groups amirite?
For those who don’t know, spaz is widely considered a slur in certain communities and countries (the UK for one), is generally known to be derogatory, is definitely considered ableist by society at large, and is historically and undeniably fixed to spasticity (non-stop painful, uncomfortable and involuntary spasms and misfirings that would send anyone who does not have spasticity to the emergency room everyday) and societal and medical exclusion. I’m so glad this term could be utilized and manipulated cutely into a political argument. I know, Kanye used the word so maybe it is *so 2016* to use it but lol Kanye isn’t exactly the beacon of historic context, marked sensitivity, and sensible argument, is he?
Liberals need to realize they are so often not pro-disability; this is an endemic problem within the party.
If you feel compelled to at me and tell me to lighten up or be less PC, please remember that what I go through every moment would send you to the emergency room.
For those who don’t know, spaz is widely considered a slur in certain communities and countries (the UK for one), is generally known to be derogatory, is definitely considered ableist by society at large, and is historically and undeniably fixed to spasticity (non-stop painful, uncomfortable and involuntary spasms and misfirings that would send anyone who does not have spasticity to the emergency room everyday) and societal and medical exclusion. I’m so glad this term could be utilized and manipulated cutely into a political argument. I know, Kanye used the word so maybe it is *so 2016* to use it but lol Kanye isn’t exactly the beacon of historic context, marked sensitivity, and sensible argument, is he?
Liberals need to realize they are so often not pro-disability; this is an endemic problem within the party.
If you feel compelled to at me and tell me to lighten up or be less PC, please remember that what I go through every moment would send you to the emergency room.
March 10, 2019
As other readers have commented, Ben Fountain's writing resembles Tom Wolfe's in its intelligent and often hilarious descriptions of people and places. For this alone, Beautiful Country Burn Again, an account of the 2016 primary season is worth reading. Fountain clearly articulates the moral failings of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Before reading this book I already knew that Trump was a habitual liar and that Clinton and her staff had rigged the Democratic primaries to block Bernie Sanders from winning the party’s nomination. But I wasn’t quite aware of the morally bankrupt cast of losers Trump surrounded himself with, or the degree to which Clinton shortchanged not just Sanders but the entire primary process by controlling the Democratic National Committee’s finances, strategy and polling data. Beautiful Country Burn Again left in me no doubt that had Bernie Sanders been treated fairly, he would have won the Democratic nomination and, most probably, have become our 45th president.
That being said, this book is more an overview of the roots and causes of America's current political trauma than a direct support or criticism of any one political figure. Fountain states that only twice before in our country's history have we faced an existential crisis, during the Civil War and the Great Depression. In both cases, America was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive. He believes that the current political climate as evidenced by the 2016 presidential campaigns calls for another such reinvention without such America's very survival may be at stake.
That being said, this book is more an overview of the roots and causes of America's current political trauma than a direct support or criticism of any one political figure. Fountain states that only twice before in our country's history have we faced an existential crisis, during the Civil War and the Great Depression. In both cases, America was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive. He believes that the current political climate as evidenced by the 2016 presidential campaigns calls for another such reinvention without such America's very survival may be at stake.
October 25, 2018
I must confess I didn’t make it past the foreword. Anyone who ascribes Trump’s election victory to “white identity politics” is mistaken on a fundamental level, making all subsequent arguments moot.
August 28, 2021
Un saggio che ricalca molto "Finzioni politiche" di Joan Didion (anche se lei rimane insuperabile), ma incentrato sula campagna elettorale del 2016, che ha fatto molto parlare.
E' sempre interessante leggere questo tipo di analisi, perché quando si parla di politica ci sono tantissimi altri argomenti in ballo: l'economia e la società, la pubblicità e l'informazione. Si toccano tante tematiche diverse, anche in modo abbastanza approfondito, cosa che va a giustificare la lunghezza del libro.
Ho apprezzato molto la struttura, che alterna analisi di argomenti particolari (la Grande Recessione, il suprematismo bianco, il problema della credibilità) a un riassunto dei fatti salienti del 2016 divisi per mese.
Consigliato se, come me, amate leggere scritti critici sulla società americana (che poi io amo leggere scritti critici sulla società in generale, ma me ne stanno capitando per le mani diversi che si focalizzano sugli USA)
E' sempre interessante leggere questo tipo di analisi, perché quando si parla di politica ci sono tantissimi altri argomenti in ballo: l'economia e la società, la pubblicità e l'informazione. Si toccano tante tematiche diverse, anche in modo abbastanza approfondito, cosa che va a giustificare la lunghezza del libro.
Ho apprezzato molto la struttura, che alterna analisi di argomenti particolari (la Grande Recessione, il suprematismo bianco, il problema della credibilità) a un riassunto dei fatti salienti del 2016 divisi per mese.
Consigliato se, come me, amate leggere scritti critici sulla società americana (che poi io amo leggere scritti critici sulla società in generale, ma me ne stanno capitando per le mani diversi che si focalizzano sugli USA)
February 16, 2020
There’s also much going on here. Fountain is impressively well read and well informed, but also able to incorporate his knowledge into these essays without coming across as pretentious or even academic. As a stylist, he’s often audacious, but never misses his mark. His gonzo style pieces entertain without veering off into incoherence. However, I was most moved by his more serious pieces towards the end of the text. Currently, US political discourse feels like 300 people in a low ceilinged 100 capacity room, all of them shouting. He manages to cut through all this noise to articulate his vision of the dream of America, and exactly what’s at stake this year.
March 22, 2025
The journalistic recounting of the 2016 election was pretty straightforward. It'll be useful to the future if anyone still reads books then. But it got much more interesting when he talked about the changes in the two major parties over the 20th and into the 21st centuries. The current state of the Democratic party and it's neoliberal ideology shows the sad state of the only opposition party (that has won major elections). Yeah, Bernie got a raw deal. Finally, the book turns red-hot when he discusses the history and the present of racism in this country. The only thing I think he doesn't talk about enough is the misogyny that rides shotgun with the racism. Read it and weep.
December 21, 2019
An absolutely horrifying, depressing, sometimes amusing and always compelling tale of how our idiot president got elected. How the social progress set in motion by FDR and continued by LBJ has been effectively dismantled. How our country is a complete mess for anyone who is poor, non-white, or burdened by conscience. It’s not just the republicans who are to blame, though without that party and their embrace of racism (going back decades) and Ayn Rand’s utter nonsense, it would have been difficult to create the same chaos we live in today. Everyone should read this book.
April 8, 2019
I loved his novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and I wondered what a nonfiction book would be like. In this recounting of 2016, he shows no mercy to candidates of either party while providing a lot of historical context. He has just enough hope to keep the book from tipping the reader into the abyss of despair. My dad will love it!
February 20, 2019
A timely read for a new election cycle.
April 4, 2019
I love his writing. This book is brilliant and I recommend it to anyone still recovering from the 2016 presidential campaign/election.
June 12, 2019
This country is well and truly buggered. Ben Fountain is heartbreakingly excellent.
December 4, 2018
I appreciate Mr Fountain as an author. A very good writer. Sadly, though, another blow by blow of the last three years is exhausting.
December 13, 2018
We have been given a reportorial masterpiece. Mr. Fountain follows the 2016 Presidential race (note that word) from January to December. The months are marked by chapters recounting news stories that month from around the world, including numerous quotations from those running for office. Of course, Donald Trump is the most quoted because his are the most idiotic utterances. We see this as we read. Only those with cross-eyed minds won't realize it.
I find it surprising that this effort has sold well: Mr. fountain certainly lambastes Donald Trump, using Trump's own words, which one would guess would drive away Trumpian readers. But he does not in any way let Bernie Sanders off without punishing revelations, and his treatment of Hilary and her husband should delight all the haters out there while offputting Clinton fans. Obama gets his, too, although he was not a candidate in the race. Ted Cruz and the NRA and our history all come into the arena and all are pilloried with their own poison.
Here and there Mr. Fountain steps in with his own observations, critiques, insights. And he gives us a heap of sass to consider come the end. Why them would anyone read this?
My answer is that the truth is being told; clear, bright, revolting and honest truth. In the end, we see Trump was elected because he gave the stupid, the angry, the misdirected, the cowardly haters---of the black, the brown, the sexually different, the dope smokers---the rich beyond decency, the power mongers of the right and several other of Dante's circles, all of these were empowered by Donald Trump. He became the grossest, most perverted, hating, stupid of all, and wrapped himself in guile, craftiness and an instinct for what the suckers would embrace. Hilary was hateful, and rightfully so, to many, and Bernie had no chance because the Democratic Party had no guts and no principles left. Cruz---well, the discussion of Cruz was so funny I had to stop reading several times. Indeed, Mr. Fountain writes with incisive humor no matter who he is showing naked pictures of.
In the end, maybe the book is bought by the largest political party we have, the 40% of eligible voters who bequeath their birthright to the lazy, ignorant and haughty, claiming moral superiority. What a surprise they get when they, too, are revealed as insipid.
Highly Recommended.
I find it surprising that this effort has sold well: Mr. fountain certainly lambastes Donald Trump, using Trump's own words, which one would guess would drive away Trumpian readers. But he does not in any way let Bernie Sanders off without punishing revelations, and his treatment of Hilary and her husband should delight all the haters out there while offputting Clinton fans. Obama gets his, too, although he was not a candidate in the race. Ted Cruz and the NRA and our history all come into the arena and all are pilloried with their own poison.
Here and there Mr. Fountain steps in with his own observations, critiques, insights. And he gives us a heap of sass to consider come the end. Why them would anyone read this?
My answer is that the truth is being told; clear, bright, revolting and honest truth. In the end, we see Trump was elected because he gave the stupid, the angry, the misdirected, the cowardly haters---of the black, the brown, the sexually different, the dope smokers---the rich beyond decency, the power mongers of the right and several other of Dante's circles, all of these were empowered by Donald Trump. He became the grossest, most perverted, hating, stupid of all, and wrapped himself in guile, craftiness and an instinct for what the suckers would embrace. Hilary was hateful, and rightfully so, to many, and Bernie had no chance because the Democratic Party had no guts and no principles left. Cruz---well, the discussion of Cruz was so funny I had to stop reading several times. Indeed, Mr. Fountain writes with incisive humor no matter who he is showing naked pictures of.
In the end, maybe the book is bought by the largest political party we have, the 40% of eligible voters who bequeath their birthright to the lazy, ignorant and haughty, claiming moral superiority. What a surprise they get when they, too, are revealed as insipid.
Highly Recommended.
February 11, 2019
OMG. We have read the Trump genre Fear and Fire and Fury but we are sick of hearing about the disfunction. Here is a way better read. Sort of a Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail for the 2016 elections.
Ben Fountain, a novelist commissioned by the Guardian to tell the story of the election. His prose is electric, buzzing with acidity of Matt Tiabbi and the dark underpinnings of Hunter Thompson. (There is even a brief homage to Hunter Thompson in the book). Early on we get an insiders view on not only Trump's scary campaign rallies but his opponents like Ted Cruz. The book is not so much about Trump as the historical context that got us to Trump. Not just the dog whistles and scare tactics but deep dives looking at the hypocrisy that defines Repubicans. There is an interesting chapter on the Democrat's third wave move towards the right by Clinton under the tutelage of Democratic Leadership Committee director Al From. The party of labor purged labor concerns.
Fountain is a masterful writer, the prose flows with urgency and humor, I can't recommend this book enough even if you don't care about politics or are numbed by the insistant ramblings of MSNBC.
Ben Fountain, a novelist commissioned by the Guardian to tell the story of the election. His prose is electric, buzzing with acidity of Matt Tiabbi and the dark underpinnings of Hunter Thompson. (There is even a brief homage to Hunter Thompson in the book). Early on we get an insiders view on not only Trump's scary campaign rallies but his opponents like Ted Cruz. The book is not so much about Trump as the historical context that got us to Trump. Not just the dog whistles and scare tactics but deep dives looking at the hypocrisy that defines Repubicans. There is an interesting chapter on the Democrat's third wave move towards the right by Clinton under the tutelage of Democratic Leadership Committee director Al From. The party of labor purged labor concerns.
Fountain is a masterful writer, the prose flows with urgency and humor, I can't recommend this book enough even if you don't care about politics or are numbed by the insistant ramblings of MSNBC.
January 11, 2021
Two major flaws kept me from finishing this book:
1. The male author couldn't stop describing female politicians' bodies. He describes Hillary Clinton's figure in great detail right at the beginning of the book, mentioning her chest at least three times. There is also a description of her hips. While he does spend some time describing male politicians' bodies (Ted Cruz's quail egg chin, Trump's stomach pouch), the vaguely sexual way he talks about women is incredibly off-putting.
2. While the book is well and deeply reported (minus the issue in point 1), it still felt like a simple recounting of events of the 2016 presidential campaign. In other words, it didn't add anything to my understanding of the election or the players involved. Perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance in this department (but I really couldn't stomach reading any more about Hillary's chest and hips, or how curvy Heidi Cruz is).
1. The male author couldn't stop describing female politicians' bodies. He describes Hillary Clinton's figure in great detail right at the beginning of the book, mentioning her chest at least three times. There is also a description of her hips. While he does spend some time describing male politicians' bodies (Ted Cruz's quail egg chin, Trump's stomach pouch), the vaguely sexual way he talks about women is incredibly off-putting.
2. While the book is well and deeply reported (minus the issue in point 1), it still felt like a simple recounting of events of the 2016 presidential campaign. In other words, it didn't add anything to my understanding of the election or the players involved. Perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance in this department (but I really couldn't stomach reading any more about Hillary's chest and hips, or how curvy Heidi Cruz is).
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