Overview

In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore traditional manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling security moms, swaggering presidential gun-slingers, and the rescue of a female soldier cast as a helpless little girl ?
The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by non-white barbarians on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms--as they did on September 11.
Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us--and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.

Full Product Details

9781427202185

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Susan Faludi: <br> Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, and it shows. Backlash,. .is punchy, well-written, well researched, convincing, thought-provoking and, in parts, very funny. -- The Guardian on Backlash <br> Faludi uses her dazzling investigative powers to zap the smug detractors of feminism, the hypocrites, backsliders, and antifeminists. The result is a rich and juicy read, informed by powerful logic and moral clarity. --Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed on Backlash <br> Faludi's prose is as strong and smooth as well-sanded hardwood, and she's got a jeweler's eye for the telling detail. -- Chicago Sun Times on Stiffed Susan Faludi's Backlash [was] in my view the most important book on women in recent decades....Stiffed is even better than Backlash,. .It is a significant and serious work...every page counts . -- New York Review of Books on Stiffed

Author Information

Tab Content 6

Countries Available