Are We There Yet?

I have an exclusive hall of fame for “truth-tellers” who possess the clairvoyance, intelligence, erudition, age, and integrity to discern and witness to truths.  This potpourri of cutting cultural criticism from a brilliant polymath demonstrates anew why Berman belongs in my hall.

—Walter A. McDougall, Pultizer Prize-winning historian, University of Pennsylvania

Are We There Yet? is a tour de force. This witty and insightful new book by Morris Berman is an utterly convincing account of how American society is ungracefully crumbling into decline, the advanced stage of which is epitomized by the ghastly and devastating rise of Donald Trump. But unlike pop criticism that suggests that movements for changing course are thwarted and victimized by powerful elites, Berman makes it clear that even greater culpability for America’s failings lies with the population itself—a largely violent, drugged up, and dumbed down mob that shares with the elites the same aspirations to hustle what they can get now and let the devil take the hindmost.

Are We There Yet? is not without hope. But hope does not lie with saving society from its own self-destruction; it cannot be saved and is probably not worth saving in any case. Hope lies with those who survive the destruction and are scavenging the waste dumps to reclaim the treasures that are carelessly being thrown away, including our own minds. Perhaps then, with such treasures, America can start over.

—Joel Magnuson, author of The Approaching Great Transformation and From Greed to Wellbeing

Once again, Morris Berman has penned a book that boldly exposes the once slow, now rapid burn that is the destruction of the American ideal of itself as exceptional and everlasting. In his most recent, and best book yet, of essays, he also provides a remedy to the American-made evisceration of itself and the knock-on effect on the rest of the world. What remains most striking about Berman's prose is his inimitable ability to combine searing analysis with just the right amount of humor to make the otherwise unthinkable, eminently digestible. Are we there yet? is a must-read, right now.

—Nomi Prins, author of All the Presidents' Bankers and It Takes a Pillage

Morris Berman brilliantly details the terminal spasms of the Great American Hustle as our matrix of rackets implodes into national bankruptcy, political idiocy, and cultural depravity. He accomplishes this with elegance, economy and wit. It ain’t a pretty picture, but at least you will know where we are going.

—James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and other works