The Age of Illusions, Andrew Bacevich
The Age of Illusions, Andrew Bacevich
2 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Age of Illusions
How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory

Author: Andrew Bacevich

Narrator: Andrew Bacevich, Rob Shapiro

Unabridged: 7 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/07/2020


Synopsis

A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power.

When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable.

In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom.

In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.

About Andrew Bacevich

Andrew Bacevich grew up in Indiana, graduated from West Point and Princeton, served in the army, became a university historian, and currently serves as the president and founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of a dozen books, among them The Limits of Power, Washington Rules, Age of Illusions, and, most recently, After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David

The Age of Illusions is a book I wanted to really like, but it has a lot of trouble getting out of its own way. Andrew Bacevich looks at the Trump administration through the lens of the post-cold war era. This is the era the USA was supposed to dominate in toto and complete freedom as the world’s so......more

Goodreads review by William

This book outlines something very important that far too few Americans are acknowledging or even thinking about: it took America two full centuries to achieve global hegemony and a mere two decades to squander it away.......more

Goodreads review by Murtaza

This book is precisely what the title suggests: an appraisal of how the United States wasted the opportunity presented by the unipolar moment that came at the end of the Cold War. I find that many American elites have still not adjusted to the fact that such a world no longer exists, as Mr. Bacevich......more

Goodreads review by Randall

Always good to read books by ex-military men who see the problems like, “Terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States and never has. Terrorism is merely a tactic, and an ancient one at that.” Remembering that Bush senior was the last President to have served in the armed forces......more

Goodreads review by Larry

I picked many more highlights out of this book and pasted them in to this Goodreads forum that I normally do. This book is chock-full of soundbites. It was published in 2019 and since it is a look at our current history in politics in the US since the end of the Cold War approximately at the end of......more


Awards

  • USA Today Best Books of the Year