Witches Are Coming

Lindy West follows up her memoir, Shrill, with a collection of essays that speak to this exact moment and are thoughtful, funny, but also angry — and proudly so.   Recommended By Keith M., Powells.com

The firebrand New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Shrill--soon to be a Hulu series starring Aidy Bryant--provides a brilliant and incisive look at how patriarchy, intolerance, and misogyny have conquered not just politics but American culture itself.

What do Adam Sandler, Donald Trump, and South Park have in common? Why are myths like "reverse sexism" and "political correctness" so seductive? And why do movie classics of yore, from Sixteen Candles to Revenge of the Nerds, make rape look like so much silly fun? With Lindy West's signature wit and in her uniquely incendiary voice, THE WITCHES ARE COMING lays out a grand theory of America that explains why Trump's election was, in many ways, a foregone conclusion.

As West reveals through fascinating journeys across the landscapes of pop culture, the lies that fostered the catastrophic resentment that boiled over in the 2016 presidential race did not spring from a vacuum. They have in fact been woven into America's DNA, cultivated by generations of mediocre white men and fed to the masses with such fury that we have become unable to recognize them as lies at all.

Whether it be the notion overheard since the earliest moments of the #MeToo movement that feminism has gone too far or the insistence that holding someone accountable for his actions amounts to a "witch hunt," THE WITCHES ARE COMING exposes the lies that many have chosen to believe and the often unexpected figures who have furthered them. Along the way, it unravels the tightening link between culture and politics, identifying in the memes, music, and movies we've loved the seeds of the neoreactionary movement now surging through the nation.

Sprawling, funny, scorching, and illuminating, THE WITCHES ARE COMING shows West at the top of her intellectual and comic powers. As much a celebration of America's potential as a condemnation of our failures, some will call it a witch hunt. To which West would reply, so be it: "I'm a witch and I'm hunting you."

**Named one of Esquire's most anticipated books of 2019**

From the very moment powerful men on top started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations have been raging from every corner: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head: FINE, IF YOU INSIST. THIS IS A WITCH HUNT. WE'RE WITCHES, AND WE'RE HUNTING YOU.
In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West suggest that Americans reckon with the dark truths that we've long left unexamined. She writes, "We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form--like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'--white American voters and the electoral college and a few Russian troll farms shoved an incompetent, racist con-man into the White House."
West unpacks the complicated, and sometimes tragic, journey and politics of not being a white man in the 21st century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics.
At once side-splittingly funny and irresistibly thought-provoking, The Witches Are Coming provides all the kindling to burn America's restrictive and outdated social norms to the ground. Lindy West lights the match.

**Named one of Esquire's most anticipated books of 2019**

THIS IS A WITCH HUNT. WE'RE WITCHES, AND WE'RE HUNTING YOU.
From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.
In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the 21st century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics--and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.
West writes, "We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form--like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'--white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con-man into the White House."
We cannot understand how we got here--how the land of the free became Trump's America--without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact-checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.