Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power

Daydream Believers combines high-level reporting with razor-sharp analysis to explain how Bush got so far off track and why much of the nation followed him. The grand illusions he believed in are flattering to the gullible, but they are absolutely wrong.

Kaplan argues that the Daydreamers' biggest mistake is the notion that 9/11 changed everything. The world operates now exactly as it always has, and the tragedy doesn't excuse them from history class. But these Daydreamers believe that they stand on the threshold of a revolution and that if we are clear in our purpose, noble in our goals, and loud in our denunciations, the victory is ours. After all, their world view also imagines that beneath every foreign face lurks an American mind waiting to be set free.

Yet the decline of the Daydreamers, Kaplan warns, could herald an era even worse than where we are now.