A consumer's guide to the apocalypse

What accounts for the apocalyptic angst that is now so clearly present among Americans who do not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy? Why do so many popular television shows, films, and songs nourish themselves on this very angst? And why do so many artists - from Tom Wolfe to Coldplay to Tori Amos - feel compelled to give it expression? It is tempting to conclude that Americans' anxieties merely constitute a rational reaction to the fearful uncertainties of the post-9/11 world. But in A Consumer's Guide to the Apocalypse, Eduardo Velásquez reveals that the roots of these anxieties lie much deeper in our collective psyche. His astonishing thesis is that when we peer into contemporary artists' creative depiction of our sensibilities we discover that the antagonisms which fuel both sides in our so-called cultural war stem from the same source. Enthusiastic religions and dogmatic science, the flourishing of scientific reason and the fascination with mystical darkness, cultural triumphalism and multicultural ideology - all are sustained by the same thing: a tenacious, if sometimes unacknowledged, commitment to the basic tenets of the Enlightenment. -- from dust cover.