The sky is falling

how vampires, zombies, androids, and superheroes made America great for extremism

No cover

Peter Biskind: The sky is falling (2018)

252 pages

English language

Published Aug. 24, 2018

ISBN:
978-1-62097-429-2
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OCLC Number:
1038025987

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2 stars (1 review)

4 editions

reviewed Sky Is Falling by Peter Biskind

Rare nuggets of insight lost amidst torrents of careless punditry

2 stars

Oh this was bad.

I was given this as a gift years ago and I would have stopped less than halfway through if it weren't. Decided to knock it off the list as a light non-fiction to finish out the summer, and while it was easy enough to get through it is a god-awful mess.

Biskind takes on all and sundry in a cocaine rush of allusions to pop-culture, whiplashing from modern superhero films to 50s B-movies, Westerns (old and some younger) to science fiction. The thesis on the cover of the book is that icons of pulp culture have 'made America great for extremism'. The book makes no clear statement of the same - there is no argument that representations in popular culture shapes or forms what is likely or easy for people to imagine as possible. Nor is there a clear argument that things work the other …

Subjects

  • Political culture
  • Civilization
  • Polarization (Social sciences)
  • Radicalism
  • Popular culture
  • Right and left (Political science)
  • History

Places

  • United States