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Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy
An award-winning historian untangles the roots of America's culture of fear, and argues that it imperils our democracy
For the last sixty years, fear has seeped into every area of American life: Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country, sequester themselves in gated communities, and retreat from public spaces. And yet, crime rates have plummeted, making life in America safer than ever. Why, then, are Americans so afraid-and where does this fear lead to?
In this remarkable work of social history, Elaine Tyler May demonstrates how our obsession with security has made citizens fear each other and distrust the government, making America less safe and less democratic. Fortress America charts the rise of a muscular national culture, undercutting the common good. Instead of a thriving democracy of engaged citizens, we have become a paranoid, bunkered, militarized, and divided vigilante nation.
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First published December 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
February 14, 2018
As a voracious student of history, and of newspapers and magazines, there is honestly little in this work that was new or surprising to me. Most of what she discusses in her book has been noted elsewhere, albeit usually in a more fragmented, partial manner.
Professor May's account does us the favor of thematically treating our collective retreat from a commitment to the "public good" -- the good of the many -- to our hyper-individualistic pursuit of individual exaltation and "success," to the considerable detriment to most of us.
It is not surprising, therefore, that her detailed coverage of how Americans have become more fearful over the past 50 years accompanies in time the post-World War II period in which "the world" has assumed -- thanks to the constant pounding of the fear-mongers on the Right -- fearful proportions painted, not in the nuanced shades of grey, but in the stark, simplified polarity of black-white. Little surprise that, when accompanied by the songs of the Right glorifying wealth and condemning "guvment," this heightened fear has led to a fleeing from the public sphere -- in which "united we stand, divided we fall" -- into fragmented and isolated homes where we take refuge from each other.
During this same period, as she details, both the sale of guns and the illusory portrayal of rising crime rates have moved apace with gated communities and fortified homes.
All of this creates a very fertile space for those who, in the name of nationalist populism, can easily work to use this weakened social consciousness of the reality of "us" to advance their authoritarian goals.
FDR once famously declared that "The only thing to fear is, fear itself," but I must respectfully note that we should also be alert to the grave damage that those who heighten and manipulate our fears can do to our democracy.
Professor May's account does us the favor of thematically treating our collective retreat from a commitment to the "public good" -- the good of the many -- to our hyper-individualistic pursuit of individual exaltation and "success," to the considerable detriment to most of us.
It is not surprising, therefore, that her detailed coverage of how Americans have become more fearful over the past 50 years accompanies in time the post-World War II period in which "the world" has assumed -- thanks to the constant pounding of the fear-mongers on the Right -- fearful proportions painted, not in the nuanced shades of grey, but in the stark, simplified polarity of black-white. Little surprise that, when accompanied by the songs of the Right glorifying wealth and condemning "guvment," this heightened fear has led to a fleeing from the public sphere -- in which "united we stand, divided we fall" -- into fragmented and isolated homes where we take refuge from each other.
During this same period, as she details, both the sale of guns and the illusory portrayal of rising crime rates have moved apace with gated communities and fortified homes.
All of this creates a very fertile space for those who, in the name of nationalist populism, can easily work to use this weakened social consciousness of the reality of "us" to advance their authoritarian goals.
FDR once famously declared that "The only thing to fear is, fear itself," but I must respectfully note that we should also be alert to the grave damage that those who heighten and manipulate our fears can do to our democracy.
December 17, 2019
May's main thesis that, as the title states, America's embracing of fear and abandoning democracy developed as a result of the Cold War does not track with a larger view of American history.
Fear has been ever-present in America long before nukes and reds became part of the national parlance: Southern whites lived in ever-present fear of slave revolt, Anglo-Saxon Protestants have long lived in fear of immigrants and the crime, there has been some version of a a crisis in masculinity and gender relations for most of country's existence (just look at Teddy Roosevelt). Vigilante justice did not rapidly increase during the Cold War as May states; the Jim Crow South existed for a century based on extrajudicial violence. Democracy in America has never been fully achieved, with the Reconstruction period perhaps coming the closest. Voting has been restricted due to fear of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities for the country's entire history. In other words, there was not a democracy to abandon, but longstanding practices that took an updated version in the late twentieth century. May's reliance on film archives for evidence is perhaps one reason for these shortcomings.
An incisive and wide-lensed analysis of fear in the development of American society and politics would be an interesting read. This book is not that.
Fear has been ever-present in America long before nukes and reds became part of the national parlance: Southern whites lived in ever-present fear of slave revolt, Anglo-Saxon Protestants have long lived in fear of immigrants and the crime, there has been some version of a a crisis in masculinity and gender relations for most of country's existence (just look at Teddy Roosevelt). Vigilante justice did not rapidly increase during the Cold War as May states; the Jim Crow South existed for a century based on extrajudicial violence. Democracy in America has never been fully achieved, with the Reconstruction period perhaps coming the closest. Voting has been restricted due to fear of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities for the country's entire history. In other words, there was not a democracy to abandon, but longstanding practices that took an updated version in the late twentieth century. May's reliance on film archives for evidence is perhaps one reason for these shortcomings.
An incisive and wide-lensed analysis of fear in the development of American society and politics would be an interesting read. This book is not that.
January 4, 2018
May's central thesis is that to understand the political polarization of contemporary America then we must understand that two major events set the nation on its current path: the first was the breeding of a culture of fear that emerged as a result of the Cold War and the second was the government's unwillingness to provide for the public good via safety and public services. These two events as she shows with historical evidence using statistics, polls, newspapers and governmental policies from 1945 to the present ensured that Americans would fear everything and everyone and seek to solve problems on their own rather than relying on the government.
January 21, 2018
I read this because I thought quite highly of May's book "Homeward Bound." That book gave some original and insightful analysis of how the Cold War affected domestic life and family relations during the mid-20th century. This book, alas, did not strike me as very insightful. I thought it's points were either obvious or strained.
May contends that a focus on protecting ourselves has led to an erosion of community and hurt our democracy. For a half-century or more, we've been increasingly conditioned to focus on what we're afraid of, and how we need protecting from that. It began as a Cold War fear of communism, but then spread to a fear of crime in the 1960s. The crime (and riots) of that decade led to a "law & order" backlash. Life became more militarized as we discussed problems as a "war on crime" and then a "war on drugs" and eventually a "war on terror." Vigilantes became glamorized in movies like Death Wish and real life cases like Bernie Goetz. We have the rise of concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws. Women are something that need to be defended - or themselves a threat. Gated communities are on the rise and in this sense of siege mentality, the home is no longer a place that provides protection, but a place that itself demands protection. We focus more and more on fear, but we're not really made any safer, just more fearful.
Much of this is fairly obvious. (May is perfectly aware that she's not breaking any new ground in arguing a rise in crime caused a law & order backlash). Frankly, a lot of stuff here is pretty obvious. Yeah, I've heard of carried conceal. Yeah, I've heard of the fears of child molesters and all that. But what's her point with all of this? Well, this is the part that struck me as overblown. She argues the increasing and perpetual state of fear people live in have destroyed our sense of community. Check out the book's title - embracing fear has caused us to abandon democracy. That ....... yeah, not buying. Just seems really overblown. I go around life and I rarely see people stuck in the state of fear that she describes. I've known one or two like that, but otherwise, people are just living their lives. The American people come off more like caricatures than actual people.
Oh, I'm not doubting or denying that there's been declining community involvement, a lessened sense of shared belonging. And this has led to a decline in our democracy That point is legitimate (and well-documented before May came along). BUT ... I don't see fear causing it. More like complacency. Yeah, it's the old Roman "bread and circus" approach. Given people enough wealth - not much necessarily, but some. Give them enough to get through their day-to-day lives adequately. And then keep them entertained. Give them the Super Bowl and Netflix and all that.
Basically, May takes two ideas that have been along and well-documented for a while: we're an increasingly militarized society and our sense of community has declined considerably. But the way she connects was frankly bogus.
One really interesting part: on page 175 she notes the results of a psychological study of SUV owners versus mini-van owners. There are no real differences between them economically or what kind of families they had. But SUV buyers were more restless, less social, had more fears of crime. That last point was one marketers often would try to focus on. The same study showed that minivan owners were more likely to be self-confident, social, and involved with family, friends, and their communities. That was interesting. But the book itself was damn disappointing.
May contends that a focus on protecting ourselves has led to an erosion of community and hurt our democracy. For a half-century or more, we've been increasingly conditioned to focus on what we're afraid of, and how we need protecting from that. It began as a Cold War fear of communism, but then spread to a fear of crime in the 1960s. The crime (and riots) of that decade led to a "law & order" backlash. Life became more militarized as we discussed problems as a "war on crime" and then a "war on drugs" and eventually a "war on terror." Vigilantes became glamorized in movies like Death Wish and real life cases like Bernie Goetz. We have the rise of concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws. Women are something that need to be defended - or themselves a threat. Gated communities are on the rise and in this sense of siege mentality, the home is no longer a place that provides protection, but a place that itself demands protection. We focus more and more on fear, but we're not really made any safer, just more fearful.
Much of this is fairly obvious. (May is perfectly aware that she's not breaking any new ground in arguing a rise in crime caused a law & order backlash). Frankly, a lot of stuff here is pretty obvious. Yeah, I've heard of carried conceal. Yeah, I've heard of the fears of child molesters and all that. But what's her point with all of this? Well, this is the part that struck me as overblown. She argues the increasing and perpetual state of fear people live in have destroyed our sense of community. Check out the book's title - embracing fear has caused us to abandon democracy. That ....... yeah, not buying. Just seems really overblown. I go around life and I rarely see people stuck in the state of fear that she describes. I've known one or two like that, but otherwise, people are just living their lives. The American people come off more like caricatures than actual people.
Oh, I'm not doubting or denying that there's been declining community involvement, a lessened sense of shared belonging. And this has led to a decline in our democracy That point is legitimate (and well-documented before May came along). BUT ... I don't see fear causing it. More like complacency. Yeah, it's the old Roman "bread and circus" approach. Given people enough wealth - not much necessarily, but some. Give them enough to get through their day-to-day lives adequately. And then keep them entertained. Give them the Super Bowl and Netflix and all that.
Basically, May takes two ideas that have been along and well-documented for a while: we're an increasingly militarized society and our sense of community has declined considerably. But the way she connects was frankly bogus.
One really interesting part: on page 175 she notes the results of a psychological study of SUV owners versus mini-van owners. There are no real differences between them economically or what kind of families they had. But SUV buyers were more restless, less social, had more fears of crime. That last point was one marketers often would try to focus on. The same study showed that minivan owners were more likely to be self-confident, social, and involved with family, friends, and their communities. That was interesting. But the book itself was damn disappointing.
September 2, 2018
In America, fear is a bankable commodity. It supports business, politics, the arts, and whole cultural movements. If you want to capture people’s attention, give them a reason to be afraid. Once it has been established, fear is extremely durable. As Elaine Tyler May demonstrates in her scathing book, Fortress America, for all its motivating power, though, fear is also exaggerated, irrational and counter-productive.
There is a double irony in Americans’ pervasive fear of various and sundry evildoers. First, statistically speaking, we are safer than ever before against all of the most worrisome threats. For all of the media-grabbing attention that it gets, violent crime is down and has been in a steady, albeit gradual decline for years. Second, not only do all the sometimes extreme steps that we take to ensure our safety have no measurable positive impact (other than to make some people feel better), they actually leave us all more vulnerable.
May begins her survey of good old fashioned American fearmongering in the Cold War era, when, amid the halcyon days of the baby-boom, citizens worried about a sneak nuclear attack from the godless Communists. Concerned that the government was incapable of guaranteeing safety, many folks took personal security into their own hands by building bomb shelters and stocking them with survival provisions. Those apprehensions transferred seamlessly into the Post-911 world, where the new threat became personified in the figure of the deranged, usually Muslim terrorist.
The fear of terrorists, surprise attacks, or doomsday ideologies is, however, a different variety of foreboding than the more personal and visceral fear of rampant crime in the streets. Subtly, but unmistakably, that fear takes on racial undertones. It is the kind of fear that prompted George Zimmerman to gun down a black teenager for having the audacity to trespass into a white neighborhood after dark. It is the underlying reason why African Americans, especially young men are disproportionately represented in prison populations. It is also the motivation behavior behind the drive for Americans to arm themselves, to seek vigilante justice, and to retreat into gated communities.
As May demonstrates throughout, though, this fear is more a product of hype than of reality. It is exploited by special interests who know that nothing motivates like anxiety, and once you have people anxious and fretting about every manner of violence against them, they are malleable to whatever product or cause you are trying to pitch.
When confronted by imminent harm, human beings must choose to flee or to fight. The response to a more generalized, potential threat, though, is somewhere in between seeking sanctuary and being prepared to fight back. Such fear never rests, though. A person in this state of mind is more, not less likely to have a hair-trigger reaction to even slight provocation. It is more reasonable to fear those people than make-believe bogeymen.
There is a double irony in Americans’ pervasive fear of various and sundry evildoers. First, statistically speaking, we are safer than ever before against all of the most worrisome threats. For all of the media-grabbing attention that it gets, violent crime is down and has been in a steady, albeit gradual decline for years. Second, not only do all the sometimes extreme steps that we take to ensure our safety have no measurable positive impact (other than to make some people feel better), they actually leave us all more vulnerable.
May begins her survey of good old fashioned American fearmongering in the Cold War era, when, amid the halcyon days of the baby-boom, citizens worried about a sneak nuclear attack from the godless Communists. Concerned that the government was incapable of guaranteeing safety, many folks took personal security into their own hands by building bomb shelters and stocking them with survival provisions. Those apprehensions transferred seamlessly into the Post-911 world, where the new threat became personified in the figure of the deranged, usually Muslim terrorist.
The fear of terrorists, surprise attacks, or doomsday ideologies is, however, a different variety of foreboding than the more personal and visceral fear of rampant crime in the streets. Subtly, but unmistakably, that fear takes on racial undertones. It is the kind of fear that prompted George Zimmerman to gun down a black teenager for having the audacity to trespass into a white neighborhood after dark. It is the underlying reason why African Americans, especially young men are disproportionately represented in prison populations. It is also the motivation behavior behind the drive for Americans to arm themselves, to seek vigilante justice, and to retreat into gated communities.
As May demonstrates throughout, though, this fear is more a product of hype than of reality. It is exploited by special interests who know that nothing motivates like anxiety, and once you have people anxious and fretting about every manner of violence against them, they are malleable to whatever product or cause you are trying to pitch.
When confronted by imminent harm, human beings must choose to flee or to fight. The response to a more generalized, potential threat, though, is somewhere in between seeking sanctuary and being prepared to fight back. Such fear never rests, though. A person in this state of mind is more, not less likely to have a hair-trigger reaction to even slight provocation. It is more reasonable to fear those people than make-believe bogeymen.
July 27, 2020
May presents a number of arguments and tenuous connections without really supporting the claims. It's taken as granted that SUV ownership and mentality has a direct tie to Atomic Age fears of nuclear attack. This feels like a logical stretch, but hey, maybe there's something there. Unfortunately, Fortress America really doesn't connect the dots. Chapters feel disjointed and only at their conclusion or transition sentences between their sections does May try to weave everything into a coherent book.
May's reliance - and this goes beyond her and well into historical and sociological methods - on cherry-picked quotes does little to support the narrative. Are these indicative of more pervasive thought? Or did she emulate the marketers she from time to time, and without real reason, mention and find just the right quote that, though distinct from the rest, supported her thesis? Case in point: Her last chapter or conclusion mentions Survival Condo as an example of how wealthy Americans have come to fear the demos and will spend obscene amounts of money to escape the people that, through decades of cultivated privacy, media sensationalism, and independence, they've been taught to fear. She fixated on price and interview with its creator. Of course, most would dismiss a 20 unit development as the silliness of an illogical few; the eccentricities that human variability will always include. But she uses a clear outlier as the culmination of her thesis. And perhaps as an indication of its ultimate flimsiness, after 378+ days on the market, only 30% of the survival units have been sold. Oof.
Using survey data helps the above concern, but even that is incomplete for while we get time-series data in the United States, we don't see cross-nation comparison. Sure, she mentions Britain a couple of times when it suited her needs, but this just highlights the lack of comparative survey data that would highlight whether Americans' fear more and came to fear more than other countries during the last half century. And then there's weird rhetorical slips into phrases like "vast majority" at crucial moments. She generally gives exact percentages, so why, again at important moments, does she instead use "vast majority" without mentioning how she defines that term? I'm sure it's actually what most would consider a "vast majority" - say, 80+% - but it's a weird contrast.
Lastly, there are also historical errors in the book that limit its credibility. For the obvious, which got repeated incorrectly at least twice in the book, George Wallace competed in the 1964 *Democratic* primary, not Republican. Why would the Democratic governor of Alabama run in the GOP? Simple mistakes like that show poor editing and an unfortunate assumption that blinding racists can only live in the GOP.
May's reliance - and this goes beyond her and well into historical and sociological methods - on cherry-picked quotes does little to support the narrative. Are these indicative of more pervasive thought? Or did she emulate the marketers she from time to time, and without real reason, mention and find just the right quote that, though distinct from the rest, supported her thesis? Case in point: Her last chapter or conclusion mentions Survival Condo as an example of how wealthy Americans have come to fear the demos and will spend obscene amounts of money to escape the people that, through decades of cultivated privacy, media sensationalism, and independence, they've been taught to fear. She fixated on price and interview with its creator. Of course, most would dismiss a 20 unit development as the silliness of an illogical few; the eccentricities that human variability will always include. But she uses a clear outlier as the culmination of her thesis. And perhaps as an indication of its ultimate flimsiness, after 378+ days on the market, only 30% of the survival units have been sold. Oof.
Using survey data helps the above concern, but even that is incomplete for while we get time-series data in the United States, we don't see cross-nation comparison. Sure, she mentions Britain a couple of times when it suited her needs, but this just highlights the lack of comparative survey data that would highlight whether Americans' fear more and came to fear more than other countries during the last half century. And then there's weird rhetorical slips into phrases like "vast majority" at crucial moments. She generally gives exact percentages, so why, again at important moments, does she instead use "vast majority" without mentioning how she defines that term? I'm sure it's actually what most would consider a "vast majority" - say, 80+% - but it's a weird contrast.
Lastly, there are also historical errors in the book that limit its credibility. For the obvious, which got repeated incorrectly at least twice in the book, George Wallace competed in the 1964 *Democratic* primary, not Republican. Why would the Democratic governor of Alabama run in the GOP? Simple mistakes like that show poor editing and an unfortunate assumption that blinding racists can only live in the GOP.
April 15, 2018
To keep things simple, I'd break the book down into what it did well and what it didn't -- three of the former and three of the latter.
May writes best and most authoritatively when she discusses the post-war anxieties of atomic war. This is her area of expertise, and the quality of the evidence and the historical context shines.
Throughout the book, May incorporates popular culture and media to illustrate the way society has succumbed to fear in its various strands. I'd note her reference to modern superhero genre films as the newest iteration of America's obsession with vigilante heroes as a strong example.
The chapters on racial divisions and the war on drugs, abortion and women's rights, and gun rights synthesize well writings others have done on the subjects individually. They work well as introductions to the topics.
The author's political leanings come through in the choice of topics to cover and the framing to give them. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does lead May into some partisan holes that could turn off readers of the opposite partisan lean. She doesn't investigate several potential legitimate reasons for Americans to fear or distrust their government, for example. While she touches on the FBI's surveillance of activists and the massacres of civilians in Vietnam, she misses low hanging fruit like Watergate or Iran-Contra. Additionally, she sometimes uncritically reports polling data without explaining their origin. In the conclusion, for example, May talks about how in 2012 79% of Republicans held anti-black views -- a shocking figure, but one that is presented without further explanation in the text.
The author also misses out on sources of fear that are of equal import to the ones she describes in the text. Anxieties over immigration and demographic change spring most prominently to mind.
Finally, the author doesn't make a solid connection between increasing fear an isolation in the country and a loss of democracy. The point of felon disenfranchisement as an example of this loss seems to be the only real world consequence of popular fear spreading in the body politic. There are others that I can imagine, but the author doesn't discuss them.
May writes best and most authoritatively when she discusses the post-war anxieties of atomic war. This is her area of expertise, and the quality of the evidence and the historical context shines.
Throughout the book, May incorporates popular culture and media to illustrate the way society has succumbed to fear in its various strands. I'd note her reference to modern superhero genre films as the newest iteration of America's obsession with vigilante heroes as a strong example.
The chapters on racial divisions and the war on drugs, abortion and women's rights, and gun rights synthesize well writings others have done on the subjects individually. They work well as introductions to the topics.
The author's political leanings come through in the choice of topics to cover and the framing to give them. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it does lead May into some partisan holes that could turn off readers of the opposite partisan lean. She doesn't investigate several potential legitimate reasons for Americans to fear or distrust their government, for example. While she touches on the FBI's surveillance of activists and the massacres of civilians in Vietnam, she misses low hanging fruit like Watergate or Iran-Contra. Additionally, she sometimes uncritically reports polling data without explaining their origin. In the conclusion, for example, May talks about how in 2012 79% of Republicans held anti-black views -- a shocking figure, but one that is presented without further explanation in the text.
The author also misses out on sources of fear that are of equal import to the ones she describes in the text. Anxieties over immigration and demographic change spring most prominently to mind.
Finally, the author doesn't make a solid connection between increasing fear an isolation in the country and a loss of democracy. The point of felon disenfranchisement as an example of this loss seems to be the only real world consequence of popular fear spreading in the body politic. There are others that I can imagine, but the author doesn't discuss them.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2023
May's main thesis that, as the title states, America's embracing of fear and abandoning democracy developed as a result of the Cold War does not track with a larger view of American history.
Fear has been ever-present in America long before nukes and reds became part of the national parlance: Southern whites lived in ever-present fear of slave revolt, Anglo-Saxon Protestants have long lived in fear of immigrants and the crime, there has been some version of a a crisis in masculinity and gender relations for most of country's existence (just look at Teddy Roosevelt). Vigilante justice did not rapidly increase during the Cold War as May states; the Jim Crow South existed for a century based on extrajudicial violence. Democracy in America has never been fully achieved, with the Reconstruction period perhaps coming the closest. Voting has been restricted due to fear of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities for the country's entire history. In other words, there was not a democracy to abandon, but longstanding practices that took an updated version in the late twentieth century. May's reliance on film archives for evidence is perhaps one reason for these shortcomings.
An incisive and wide-lensed analysis of fear in the development of American society and politics would be an interesting read. This book is not that.
Fear has been ever-present in America long before nukes and reds became part of the national parlance: Southern whites lived in ever-present fear of slave revolt, Anglo-Saxon Protestants have long lived in fear of immigrants and the crime, there has been some version of a a crisis in masculinity and gender relations for most of country's existence (just look at Teddy Roosevelt). Vigilante justice did not rapidly increase during the Cold War as May states; the Jim Crow South existed for a century based on extrajudicial violence. Democracy in America has never been fully achieved, with the Reconstruction period perhaps coming the closest. Voting has been restricted due to fear of racial, ethnic, and gender minorities for the country's entire history. In other words, there was not a democracy to abandon, but longstanding practices that took an updated version in the late twentieth century. May's reliance on film archives for evidence is perhaps one reason for these shortcomings.
An incisive and wide-lensed analysis of fear in the development of American society and politics would be an interesting read. This book is not that.
July 24, 2020
May traces how security and the common defense went from a collective responsibility to an individual responsibility and how it has fractured our communities and lead to the breakdown of social trust.
Why I started this book: I'm trying to alternate between new books to my giant pile of books to be read and ones that have lingered on the list for far too long.
Why I finished it: This book is all about fear, and it raised my anxiety to read it. Fascinating to have May lay out the steps taken between individual steps to protect your family during a nuclear war, to individual steps to protect yourself during a crime war... when both are ineffective and counterproductive. And are main used by politicians to shame the poor and minorities, and collect votes and power. None of the history was new, but May laid it out in a new and frightening picture.
Why I started this book: I'm trying to alternate between new books to my giant pile of books to be read and ones that have lingered on the list for far too long.
Why I finished it: This book is all about fear, and it raised my anxiety to read it. Fascinating to have May lay out the steps taken between individual steps to protect your family during a nuclear war, to individual steps to protect yourself during a crime war... when both are ineffective and counterproductive. And are main used by politicians to shame the poor and minorities, and collect votes and power. None of the history was new, but May laid it out in a new and frightening picture.
May 17, 2018
A very enjoyable book which examines the years from the end of World War 2 up to the election of Trump as President in 2016. The theme of the book is the increasing degree of fear in American lives in so many different ways such as that of crime and the insecurity of the individual. The amazing reality is that the growth of fear often corresponded with a decline in the cause of the anxiety as is the case with crime statistics which demonstrate conclusively that serious crime has declined over the last 20 years at the same time as fear of it has increased. The author ties all the fragments of this increasing fear together at the end of the book and shows how they have contributed to the rise of Trump and the right wing Republicans who eagerly follow him.
August 7, 2018
Traces the Land of the Fear to the end of WW II, through the Cold War with a short wrap up to current events.
Gives so many examples on how an easily frightened populace takes erroneous measures to feel safe vs effective steps to be safe.
Examples include the gated community, racial profiling of bad guys -when the reality is that white males are the most violent; beware of strangers vs statistics that show domestic violence at the hands of people you know very well is pervasive; the Hummer, a terrible vehicle that flips over easily and is very dangerous to drive, etc. etc.
Sad to witness the demise of the Great Democracy in the hands of the Fear.
Gives so many examples on how an easily frightened populace takes erroneous measures to feel safe vs effective steps to be safe.
Examples include the gated community, racial profiling of bad guys -when the reality is that white males are the most violent; beware of strangers vs statistics that show domestic violence at the hands of people you know very well is pervasive; the Hummer, a terrible vehicle that flips over easily and is very dangerous to drive, etc. etc.
Sad to witness the demise of the Great Democracy in the hands of the Fear.
January 16, 2018
Interesting historical context for development of FEAR mentality since the 1950's that encouraged by government has led to enormous military build-up, spread of suburbs and gated communities, helicopter parenting, abandonment of concern with common good, fear of strangers over any fear of the more realistic danger of domestic violence, fear of random murder over more likely deaths from automobile accidents, inordinate level of FEAR not backed up by statistics. Book is unfortunately repetitive but still worth reading because the basic point it is making is important to consider
September 12, 2019
This book reads like a sociology or history text seeking a readership that is wider than a college course. It does some things well, including its discussions of the Cold War years and the vigilante culture of America. Other parts of the book are not as fleshed out and, therefore, not as convincing. The writer appears to have cherry-picked the issues as well as the research results given. The last chapter enters the Trump presidency years with predictable narrative, and despite the hopeful summation at the end, the book leaves some (intentionally?) gloomy predictions in place. It is certainly an important, if uneven, read. The discussions of vigilante movements and the NRA role in developing those movements are eye-opening. The book does encourage the reader to think for oneself. In summary, the call for activism on the many issues discussed in the book may be its greatest value.
June 23, 2025
Fortress America is certainly a thought-provoking and informative read, particularly about the 1950s and '60s, May seems less of an objective voice on more recent events. In the end, her suggestion that Trump "won the presidency by promising, essentially, to turn the entire country into a gated community" may amuse many readers but it will likely alienate many others.
-Kate Braithwaite
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
-Kate Braithwaite
Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...
January 20, 2026
May provides an insightful look into the cause of the overwhelming fear that the Americans seem to constantly be in. While the amorphous other that they are told to fear constantly change, this continuous emphasis of fear throughout the twentieth and now twenty-first century in America has left an indelible mark on its society and culture. While some chapters were more repetitive than others, May still is able to capture the flow of fear that drove the public away from one another and readily cast away their freedom to for the feeling of security.
December 29, 2020
Elaine Tyler May demonstrates her expertise in the field of postwar domestic U.S. history. This is a generalized account of how the United States Government created a methodology for policing its citizens out of fear. Due to the short nature of the book, May glosses over larger systemic issues in the U.S. when analyzing African Americans, crime, and violence.
This book is aimed at older liberal/left leaning individuals and shares little new information on the suburbanized fortress that the U.S. home has become since 1945.
This book is aimed at older liberal/left leaning individuals and shares little new information on the suburbanized fortress that the U.S. home has become since 1945.
January 24, 2018
This book describes how the US became obsessed with fear and security and how faith was lost in citizenship and democracy. Elaine Tyler May takes us back to pre-Cold War America to provide a decade-by-decade narrative of how we got to where we are now as a nation. Her thesis in Fortress America was clearly laid out and easy to follow.
April 20, 2018
Why are Americans so afraid? For over 60 years, this country's postwar politics have been gripped by fear of several different terrors: Communism, nuclear war, social upheaval, crime, terrorism. As a result, we as a nation have enacted policies that have succeeded not in making us safer, but in undermining our own democratic system of government.
September 11, 2018
America has always needed a bogeyman. While I like the idea behind this book, the execution is hit and miss. Some of the supporting documentation seems to be selective and not always convincing. I think if the author spent more time documenting the history of American “security” it would have been a more satisfying study. I wonder if this is part of a larger work that may be forthcoming.
August 10, 2020
This is an eye-opening account of how Americans have been systematically convinced that our homes and cities are unsafe and need to be fortified. Despite the fact that crime decreased, the public was told it was necessary to personally protect yourself, your family and your home. It's a brainwashing to the advantage of gun rights advocates and home security manufacturers.
July 14, 2019
Nothing groundbreaking here, but worthwhile as a concise, accessible chronicle of the rise of paranoia in U.S. culture and society since the Cold War thanks, in no small part, to the complicity of advertising, news media, politics, and popular culture.
April 12, 2023
this one was a lot better than i thought it would be! i had to read this one for a college history class, and actually enjoyed it. there were a few chapters that were easier to read than others, but i could have seen myself enjoying this one outside of class.
January 7, 2018
It was okay. I felt some the statistics were skewed to prove her point which made me have less trust in in the points she was trying to prove. I did find much of the information interesting.
September 18, 2019
Decent read, recommended
May 12, 2021
A MUST READ
research
July 28, 2021⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.
March 31, 2018
Fortress America is the title on the cover; perhaps Gimme Shelter was an earlier, working title.
May is the history professor I wish I’d had - I’d wish all of us had. Well, now we can, even if for a bit. May expertly explains calmly & rationally the social state we’re in and how we got to this point. We’ve lost civics & nationhood, segmenting our citizens; commitment to the public good was overwhelmed by unjustified fear.
This author looks at recurring themes after WWII. Throughout, May understands the illusion of security and discusses what’s driven white, upper-middle-class & ultra-rich men to instill fear and manipulate the masses to the advantage of Capitalism. “The laws were driven by irrational fear, not a sure grasp of reality.” (page 90) So, we’ve danced this dance before yet do not become better with practice; the cynicism is mine.
May reviews GW Bush’s War on Terror as “security theater”: rules & regulations to assuage citizens without actually protecting them. May we keep our shoes on in airports, then? My question. This Bush used wartime powers to “compromise and constrict the normal workings of a democratic society...” (page 183) May reasons that Trump’s theater does little to address the real insecurities caused by an ever-growing income gap.
The Doomsday Clock is two and a half minutes to midnight since Trump took office; in 1990 it was seventeen minutes.
So emotional reasoning - illogical - is a pattern chosen by those grown-ups who are immature, irresponsible, and irritable and they’re running our country.
I found comfort in May’s discourse because it validated my sense that these fake adults aren’t a new phenomenon. May is the calm in the eye of the storm.
May is the history professor I wish I’d had - I’d wish all of us had. Well, now we can, even if for a bit. May expertly explains calmly & rationally the social state we’re in and how we got to this point. We’ve lost civics & nationhood, segmenting our citizens; commitment to the public good was overwhelmed by unjustified fear.
This author looks at recurring themes after WWII. Throughout, May understands the illusion of security and discusses what’s driven white, upper-middle-class & ultra-rich men to instill fear and manipulate the masses to the advantage of Capitalism. “The laws were driven by irrational fear, not a sure grasp of reality.” (page 90) So, we’ve danced this dance before yet do not become better with practice; the cynicism is mine.
May reviews GW Bush’s War on Terror as “security theater”: rules & regulations to assuage citizens without actually protecting them. May we keep our shoes on in airports, then? My question. This Bush used wartime powers to “compromise and constrict the normal workings of a democratic society...” (page 183) May reasons that Trump’s theater does little to address the real insecurities caused by an ever-growing income gap.
The Doomsday Clock is two and a half minutes to midnight since Trump took office; in 1990 it was seventeen minutes.
So emotional reasoning - illogical - is a pattern chosen by those grown-ups who are immature, irresponsible, and irritable and they’re running our country.
I found comfort in May’s discourse because it validated my sense that these fake adults aren’t a new phenomenon. May is the calm in the eye of the storm.
July 7, 2020
Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy, by American historian Elaine Taylor May, is a concise, readable survey of the cultural life of the last half-century of American culture. May describes the forces that have led Americans to perceive the world as being more dangerous than ever before, both at home and abroad, despite crime being at a historic low and global relationships being historically stable.
May’s analysis brings up another of the perennial questions of modern politics throughout the world, but especially in the United States; the balance between the “common good” (whatever that is) and “individual liberty” (or whatever you call it). As the national culture, among both Republicans and Democrats, has prioritized the idea of personal responsibility over that of social safety nets, feelings of community have decreased nationally. The expectation that “you’re on your own” if a disaster occurs, that not only will no help come but that it’s shameful to even ask for it, contributes to feelings of deep insecurity. This is particularly evident with the advent of COVID-19. With people feeling more atomized, their anxieties can be capitalized on to enact authoritarian policies. Trump found himself well placed to take advantage.
I talk about more books that attempt to explain the current state of the world over at my book discussion page, Harris' Tome Corner.
May’s analysis brings up another of the perennial questions of modern politics throughout the world, but especially in the United States; the balance between the “common good” (whatever that is) and “individual liberty” (or whatever you call it). As the national culture, among both Republicans and Democrats, has prioritized the idea of personal responsibility over that of social safety nets, feelings of community have decreased nationally. The expectation that “you’re on your own” if a disaster occurs, that not only will no help come but that it’s shameful to even ask for it, contributes to feelings of deep insecurity. This is particularly evident with the advent of COVID-19. With people feeling more atomized, their anxieties can be capitalized on to enact authoritarian policies. Trump found himself well placed to take advantage.
I talk about more books that attempt to explain the current state of the world over at my book discussion page, Harris' Tome Corner.
August 11, 2020
I deeply enjoyed May's thoroughly researched and well written book on the relationship between fear, a security culture, and the erosion of social trust so essential to healthy democracy. Seeing some of the resonance between the political culture of the Nixon presidency and the Trump presidency in terms of law enforcement, vigilantism, xenophobia, and resistance to progressivism was enlightening as well as slightly eerie. As I was in college when 9/11 happened, I have some recollection of the way things felt before there was such an attitude of fear and anxiety throughout the country. Ironically, having traveled in Mexico and Guatemala over the past several years, where crime rates are even higher than in the United States, I tended to feel safer because streets and public places were more populated. May's book has many profound insights for our time, and I appreciate how she concludes with a message of hope for the restoration of a healthy democratic culture and some renunciation of overblown fear of the other.
April 8, 2020
Collects a decent amount of statistical and anecdotal evidence to support the argument that American culture has largely been driven by fear since World War II. The book's weakness is that it constructs an extensive narrative in a relatively short space, giving the impression that the data was cherrypicked to support the thesis.
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