America is out of Control. It's a place where celebrity worship takes on a religious fervor; where cult prophets lead their followers to take up arms or sacrifice themselves in mass suicides; where the media are churned up by one feeding frenzy after another; where antigovernment extremists talk of secession from the union and worse.

From the far left to the far right, talk radio to the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling, that democracy is profoundly imperiled. Are we on the eve of an Age of Unreason? Or are the premonitions of doom haunting America at the end of the twentieth century just millennial fever - the same mania that swept across Western civilization a thousand years ago?

In The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium, Mark Dery brilliantly elucidates the method to our madness. One of our most astute cultural critics, he takes his pointed wit to American culture, revealing its deeper meanings.