Reviews
The author covers events much like an especially woke journalist... For most readers, Fountain will offer fresh insights...The author's masterful original phrasings make the book worthwhile, urgent, and timely., [Fountain's] words are emotional and powerful. While Donald Trump and those who enable him are primary targets, no one escapes his criticism, including much of the American electorate. Beautiful Country Burn Again has the potential to arm the body politic with their greatest weapon--knowledge., The reality of US politics outdistanced the wildest extravagances of imagination a long time ago, which is only one of a hundred deft, discomfiting points Fountain makes. In today's superheated political climate, fairness and perspective are hard to come, but Fountain manages to take a relatively measured view., [Fountain] is not only a sharp writer but an astute observer of the human condition. And, it turns out, he's got a sharp mind for politics and history, too.... The book is a captivating read -- often humorous, infuriating, and depressing all at the same time., Thank God for Ben Fountain...Here is a quirky truth teller, a creative, who is attempting to steer America on a path that will bring some goodness to the most of us. Beautiful Country Burn Again is...written with a novelist's skill of heart and with a researcher's expertise., Sometimes it takes a novelist to capture a world gone mad...With clarity of mind and the most observant of eyes, Fountain gives us a memorable and unique portrait of...an American moment which is likely to shape us for far longer than any of us would like to contemplate., A masterpiece of a book, the true story of American possibility...So smart, so funny, so well-researched, so brilliantly argued, so scathing and at times shaming and, most of all, morally honest...I hope every word will find its way into the coarsening minds and hearts of every American., The force and beauty of Fountain's writing, his clear-eyed fury, his commitment to what is great about the American idea, make for exhilarating reading. A book for right now, and for all the fires next time., As a stylist, Fountain combines the talents of Ambrose Bierce, Norman Mailer, and Hunter Thompson.... A penetrating critique of a contemporary American politics thoroughly corrupted by money.... Ben Fountain's voice--enraged, unsparing, unrelenting, acutely attuned to hypocrisy, and suffused with wit--invests his testimony with an authority that commands respect., There may be no writer alive today who better captures the manic, fevered, paranoid style in 21st-century America than Ben Fountain.