Bummerland

Randolph Lewis is a professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of "Navajo Talking Picture": Cinema on Native Ground (Nebraska, 2012), Alanis Obomsawin: The Vision of a Native Filmmaker (Nebraska, 2006), and Under Surveillance: Being Watched in Modern America.

• Introduction1. The Super-Hyped, Ultra-Rich Technopolis of Despair2. Into the Wasteland3. Waiting for Elon4. Plastic Passion5. Healing Inc.6. Testosterone7. White Lies8. Jewel Thieves9. Our Degraded Chaplin10. The Aging Process11. Subdivision12. Selma13. Pigeons14. Sensitive Man15. Killing Us Softly16. Behind the Pine Curtain17. Civil War18. Big-Box Blues19. Under the Violet Crown20. Rage Lava21. The F-Word22. Naked Lunch 202023. Obscene Delirium24. Animal People25. Dreams Never End26. Lowered Expectations27. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Reflux28. Sweatshop Barbie29. Stress Test30. Walmart Salvation 202131. Norway/Uvalde32. Vegas Loopy33. Exile34. Sway35. UnobtaniumEpilogueAcknowledgmentsNotes

"A fine book to carry to the barricades."—Kirkus Reviews"Incisive and witty, Bummerland . . . urges readers to reflect on both the weirdness and promise of everyday experience and to make authentic contact with fellow witnesses to stay sane amid the current madness."—Theodore Hamm, jacobin.com"Keenly observed, deeply felt, and beautifully written, Randolph Lewis's Bummerland is the funniest, saddest, and wisest book you'll read this year. You won't find a better guide to the tragic America wrought by Donald Trump and Elon Musk."—Ari Kelman, author of A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek, winner of the Bancroft Prize in History"This acid-tongued, profoundly sad and hilarious, tragic-gonzo adventure trip through a seductively deranged country feels out the grim landscape of the great American derailing of the 2020s. It invents, with a growing number of other shining books, a passionate pragmatic genre to approach a soft revolution devoted to well-being, creativity, equity, sustainability, and solidarity."—Kathleen Stewart, author of A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an "Other" America"A darkly comic, deeply personal meditation on how it feels to live through the violence, absurdity, and precarity of contemporary U.S. life. Randolph Lewis drives the reader through diverse landscapes, ranging from a nightmarish blending of Cormac McCarthy–esque horrors with large-scale Mad Max apocalyptic visions to ordinary scenes of anxious impotence and desperate yearning."—Karen Engle, author of Seeing Ghosts: 9/11 and the Visual Imagination