Americans are losing touch with reality. On virtually every issue, from climate change to immigration, tens of millions of Americans have opinions and beliefs wildly at odds with fact, rendering them unable to think sensibly about politics. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson explains the rise of a world of “alternative facts” and the slow motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us.

A call to action, his book encourages us to wrest institutional power from ideologues and disrupters and entrust it to sensible citizens and leaders to restore our commitment to mutual tolerance and restraint, to cleanse the internet of fake news and disinformation, and to demand a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant information from our news sources.

As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote decades ago, the rise of demagogues is abetted by “people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists”. In How America Lost Its Mind, Thomas E. Patterson makes a passionate case for fully and fiercely engaging on the side of truth and mutual respect in our present arms race between fact and fake, unity and division, civility and incivility.

The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

Praise for the book:

“A book...that needed to be written...the response of a reasoned, thinking person to a cultural and political calamity that he and many others saw unfolding in slow motion.” (Keith Gaddie, coauthor of The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act)