Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin—to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.
The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.
“Almond holds up literature as a guide through America’s age-old moral dilemmas and finds hope for his country in family, forgiveness, and political resistance.” —Booklist
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Steve Almond. (2018). Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. Red Hen Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Steve Almond. 2018. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. Red Hen Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Steve Almond, Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. Red Hen Press, 2018.
MLA Citation (style guide)Steve Almond. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. Red Hen Press, 2018.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781597092234
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B07BXZ8LGW
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781597092234
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Steve Almond
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Bad Stories
- dateAdded
- 2018-05-11T22:04:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=3941269
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Bad Stories What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
- crossRefId
- 3941269
- subtitle
- What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
- id
- 50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68
- starRating
- 4.3
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: BadStories_9781597092234_3941269
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 4562684
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781597092234
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 9/30/2020
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50baf6e7-bf89-4ea7-b722-d3fed92e9a68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: BadStories_3941269
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B07BXZ8LGW
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 9/30/2020
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50baf6e7-bf89-4ea7-b722-d3fed92e9a68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: BadStories_9781597092234_3941269
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 4533823
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781597092234
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 9/30/2020
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=50baf6e7-bf89-4ea7-b722-d3fed92e9a68&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- keywords
- value: Political
- value: country
- value: Donald Trump
- value: American
- value: democracy
- value: voting
- value: Presidency
- value: 2016 election
- value: trumpism
- value: bad stories
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Almond, Steve
- bioText: Steve Almond is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times–bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast "Dear Sugars" with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.
- name: Steve Almond
- publishDate
- 2018-03-01T00:00:00-05:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Bad Stories
- fullDescription
- “Almond draws on everything from The Grapes of Wrath to the voting practices of his babysitter to dismantle the false narratives about American democracy.” —Cheryl Strayed, international-bestselling author of Wild
Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin—to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.
The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.
“Almond holds up literature as a guide through America’s age-old moral dilemmas and finds hope for his country in family, forgiveness, and political resistance.” —Booklist - reviews
- premium: False
- source: The Good Men Project
- content: "In his 2018 collection, Bad Stories, author Steve Almond offers a jarring and truthful overview of our nation's current fractured psychology--offering both a post-mortem of the 2016 election, and an examination of the pervasive nature of competition and sport in all aspects of our lives. While competition is good, it also has a dark side. Almond refers to what he calls the "sports brain," in which we only see our experiences as wins and losses, where we revel more in the defeat of others instead of our own success."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
December 11, 2017
Almond (Against Football) delivers a worthwhile foray into understanding and responding to the Trump era from a liberal perspective. To this end, he examines misconceptions, or “bad stories,” he sees as contributing to the debasement of American civic discourse, such as “economic anguish fueled Trumpism” or “there is no such thing as fair and balanced.” What has “come apart” for Almond is a serious commitment to the work of a liberal democracy. Instead, he sees the right and left relegating politics to the realms of, respectively, horror film (in alarmist Fox News stories) and farce (on the Daily Show). A major touchstone for Almond’s analysis is Neil Postman’s 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, which now seems clairvoyant, he observes, about America’s “descent into triviality” via mass media. Taking storytelling as a basic human need, Almond’s commendable goal is to make room for the invention of better stories that draw on humanity’s finer instincts: generosity over greed, patience or curiosity over blind loyalty or rage. Notwithstanding the author’s own occasional one-sidedness, especially in too-pat psychologizing of Clinton opponents and Trump supporters, these essays unfold some timely insights and avenues into the despair stalking American public life.
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
Starred review from February 15, 2018
With the same biting wit that marks Almond's previous books of social criticism (Against Football, 2014), the accomplished fiction writer and journalist aims to decode the social conditions that landed Trump in the White House. This chronicle full of what Almond calls bad stories, a term that suggests a malignant motive as well as dubious content and damaging outcomes, covers a broad range of topics while walking the line between commentary and personal memoir. Almond recalls his early days as an overeager reporter who believed his pieces on social justice could change the world, only to learn that he could trust neither journalists nor readers to value compassion. His conflicted relationship with journalism shapes his opinions on the tribal nature of sports culture, Russia's involvement in the U.S. election, the effectiveness of pedaling conspiracy theories, and Trump's constant presence in the news. But despite Almond's unabashed liberal allegiance, he casts equal blame on both the left and the right, bitingly criticizing, for example, liberal comedians such as Jon Stewart and Bill Maher for making light of Trump while basking in their glowing reviews. Almond holds up literature as a guide through America's age-old moral dilemmas and finds hope for his country in family, forgiveness, and political resistance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)
- popularity
- 0
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/50baf6e7-bf89-4ea7-b722-d3fed92e9a68/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- 50baf6e7-bf89-4ea7-b722-d3fed92e9a68
- starRating
- 4.3
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG100.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG200.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG150.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{50BAF6E7-BF89-4EA7-B722-D3FED92E9A68}IMG400.JPG
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Essays
- value: Politics
- value: Sociology
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 03/01/2018
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
- “Almond draws on everything from The Grapes of Wrath to the voting practices of his babysitter to dismantle the false narratives about American democracy.” —Cheryl Strayed, international-bestselling author of Wild
Like a lot of Americans, Steve Almond spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices—from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin—to help explain the roots of our moral... - sortTitle
- Bad Stories What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
- crossRefId
- 3941269
- subtitle
- What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
- publisher
- Red Hen Press
- bisacCodes
- code: POL007000
- description: Political Science / Political Ideologies / Democracy
- code: POL032000
- description: Political Science / Essays
- code: SOC026040
- description: Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory
