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Throughout his storied career, Richard Slotkin has worked tirelessly to pierce America’s fictions with facts. His new work chronicles the creation of our central myths and shows quite clearly how they have been mobilized by both sides of the contemporary culture wars. A Great Disorder is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future possibilities of American democracy. -- Kevin M. Kruse, coeditor of <i>Myth America</i> Here we see a master at work: Richard Slotkin takes five foundational myths—the stories that bind together the American experience—and explores how each one has shaped our shared history and infuses the present. A provocative culmination of Slotkin’s field-defining arguments on the place of violence in creating America, this book is a kind of decoder ring for understanding the ideologies, politics, and cultural productions of the current moment. -- Kathleen Belew, author of <i>Bring the War Home</i> Richard Slotkin has shown, in three celebrated books, how the myths of the frontier have shaped American history, culture, politics, and institutions. Now, he reveals how America’s foundational myths have profoundly shaped its culture wars since the late 1990s. This book is a masterpiece, a fitting capstone to an extraordinary career. It should be required reading for all Americans, for it will change our understanding of the United States today. -- John Stauffer, author of <i>Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln</i> A supple and dazzling paean to the democracy our mythology once inspired, then impeded, and now fatally distorts. It affirms W. E. B. Du Bois’s truth of truths: ‘the contested meanings of the color-line have been fundamental to the shaping of American nationality, politics—and mythology.’ -- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>W. E. B. Du Bois</i>

Throughout his storied career, Richard Slotkin has worked tirelessly to pierce America's fictions with facts. His new work not only chronicles the creation of some of this country's central myths but shows quite clearly how they have been mobilized by both sides of the contemporary culture wars. A Great Disorder is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future possibilities of American democracy.--Kevin M. Kruse, coeditor of Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past

Offers a consistently revelatory lens through which to understand the evolution of popular beliefs and the imaginative dynamics at work during watershed historical moments…A wonderfully clear, cogent account of the stakes involved in American mythology. * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * Throughout his storied career, Richard Slotkin has worked tirelessly to pierce America’s fictions with facts. His new work chronicles the creation of our central myths and shows quite clearly how they have been mobilized by both sides of the contemporary culture wars. A Great Disorder is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future possibilities of American democracy. -- Kevin M. Kruse, coeditor of <i>Myth America</i> Here we see a master at work: Richard Slotkin takes five foundational myths—the stories that bind together the American experience—and explores how each one has shaped our shared history and infuses the present. A provocative culmination of Slotkin’s field-defining arguments on the place of violence in creating America, this book is a kind of decoder ring for understanding the ideologies, politics, and cultural productions of the current moment. -- Kathleen Belew, author of <i>Bring the War Home</i> Richard Slotkin has shown, in three celebrated books, how the myths of the frontier have shaped American history, culture, politics, and institutions. Now, he reveals how America’s foundational myths have profoundly shaped its culture wars since the late 1990s. This book is a masterpiece, a fitting capstone to an extraordinary career. It should be required reading for all Americans, for it will change our understanding of the United States today. -- John Stauffer, author of <i>Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln</i> A supple and dazzling paean to the democracy our mythology once inspired, then impeded, and now fatally distorts. It affirms W. E. B. Du Bois’s truth of truths: ‘the contested meanings of the color-line have been fundamental to the shaping of American nationality, politics—and mythology.’ -- David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <i>W. E. B. Du Bois</i>

Author Information

Richard Slotkin is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University, best known for his award-winning trilogy on the Myth of the Frontier, two volumes of which, Regeneration Through Violence and Gunfighter Nation, were National Book Award finalists. Winner of the Shaara Award for Civil War fiction, he regularly contributes to media projects on gun violence, racism, the Civil War, and the West. His latest book, A Great Disorder, is longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award.

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