Publisher Description
Americans lived in a different reality in 1980: Vermont was the only state that let residents carry a concealed firearm without a permit. Twenty-four states now allow this—and numerous other gun laws have fallen by the wayside. When police were accused of wrongdoing, the default answer from society's arbiters was: "The police wouldn't lie." Editors steered clear of stories about rape and sexual violence. The word "homeless" wasn't in common use. The fabric of the middle class had not yet begun fraying.
America of the 2020s is living with cultural shapeshifting rooted in the 1980s. American Doom Loop chronicles the first part of that moving picture, then brings the story forward.
As a newspaper journalist, Dale Maharidge had a front-row seat to this decade. He was in the Philippines during the last days of Dictator Ferdinand Marcos, witnessing the US lose a critical piece of its empire dating to the Spanish–American War; he embedded with a group that was a precursor to the Oath Keepers; and he investigated police, who kept trying to get him fired.
Through it all, Maharidge gained an invaluable view of a complicated decade that offers insight into our society today.
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About Dale Maharidge
Dale Maharidge is the author of ten books, one of which won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. His first book, Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, inspired Bruce Springsteen to write two songs. His second book, And Their Children After Them, won the Pulitzer Prize. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University and has written for Rolling Stone, George magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones, and the New York Times, among others. He was a 1988 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and has had artistic residencies at both Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He is a tenured professor at the graduate school of journalism at Columbia University.