From the far left to the far right, on talk radio an the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a pyrotechnic insanitarium, Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name of Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety--a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism an the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism.