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When I was a kid, my teachers and parents worked hard to persuade me of the set of values that they had worked out. Most of what they told me, about music, about politics, about literature, about sex, turned out to be wrong. I promised myself that I would try hard not to foist my own prejudices on my children. They, after all, are going to be the ones who have to deal with this huge mess that we have made for them. So, I look at the world now and I see, as Chris Hedges does, that it seems to be wrapped up in greed rather than compassion, in spectacle rather than ideas, and in celebrity rather than authenticity. I read this book because I hoped it would provide arguments on behalf of compassion, ideas and authenticity. The arguments would show for instance that wrestling leads to wife battering or that pornography leads to sexual abuse or that Positive Thinking leads to narcissistic complacency. Or whatever the data shows. The author needs to establish some cause and effect. But he doesn't. All he does is describe something he doesn't like, with anecdotal detail, with vigorous metaphors and at great length; then he makes this huge leap to some sentence like "At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real." (p 145). That conclusion could be true. But when we act against "our country's moral decay" we need to know that it IS true. We need to be confident that when we talk to our children we are not making the same mistake as our parents. If you are looking for that confidence, this book won't help you. If you just want to go around saying "Yeah, I'm right, I'm right," then go ahead and read the book. In the end, Empire of Illusion is the very thing that it rails against; the triumph of style over substance.