Kurt Andersen’s excoriating attack on the US today is uncomfortable reading, especially after the recent massacre in Las Vegas. Nonetheless, like many polemics, it is charged with enough anger and wit to become necessary reading. Inspired by the unlikely accession of Donald Trump – a man he dismisses as “a pure Fantasyland being, its apotheosis” – to the White House, Andersen looks at the past half-millennium of American history by skilfully deconstructing the myths and fantasies that have evolved since the country’s foundation. Many of the targets are relatively easy ones, not least Trump himself, and there is, throughout, a sense that this able and witty writer is largely preaching to the converted. Yet, as he dissects everything from the Salem witch hunts to Scientology, he manages to present a frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards.

• Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire by Kurt Andersen is published by Random House ($30)