The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America Audiobook

In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock societal drama shot through with baffling contradictions. Why, she asks, did our culture respond to an assault against American global dominance with a frenzied summons to restore "traditional" manhood, marriage, and maternity? Why did we react as if the hijackers had targeted not a commercial and military edifice but the family home and nursery? Why did an attack fueled by hatred of Western emancipation lead us to a regressive fixation on Doris Day womanhood and John Wayne masculinity, with trembling "security moms," swaggering presidential gun-slingers, and the "rescue" of a female soldier cast as a "helpless little girl"? The answer, Faludi finds, lies in a historical anomaly unique to the American experience: the nation that in recent memory has been least vulnerable to domestic attack was forged in traumatizing assaults by non-white "barbarians" on town and village. That humiliation lies concealed under a myth of cowboy bluster and feminine frailty, which is reanimated whenever threat and shame looms—as they did on September 11. Brilliant and important, The Terror Dream shows what 9/11 revealed about us—and offers the opportunity to look at ourselves anew.

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"What a knockout read. Faludi puts together the pieces of the puzzle of 9/11's effects on feminism in a surprisingly easy to read and accessible format. Her passion for this subject is obvious, and it reignited a great deal of passion, frustration, and resolve in me (emotions that too often lie dormant as my busy life, like everyone else's, leaves little time for the continual, deep thinking about gender issues that are so crucial if we are ever to effect change.) The book gets a little too far off track for me in the second half as it delves deeply into the maiden-in-distress mythology of the American past (from the earliest days of the Puritans to the John Wayne movies of a half century ago.). Even having seen "The Searchers" and read captivity narratives like Mary Rowlandson's, I found my mind wandering in those chapters. If you have not seen the film or read the narratives she references, I imagine you may be somewhat bored or not fully engaged. Certainly the stories are relevant to the core message of the book, but I think she could have covered them more succinctly. But that's a very small criticism to an overall fantastic and IMPORTANT book."

— Leslie (4 out of 5 stars)