Feuerhelm guides us through a sequence of images he has collected, upon which he activates a destructive process, taking aim at all variations of the American dream. The volume includes texts by Anthony Faramelli and Ryan Mahan. "The images that Brad Feuerhelm has gathered, shattered, scratched, worn down, destroyed, reveal the perverse ideological core of American culture with excruciating clarity. It's as if Feuerhelm is literally trying to tear away a simulacrum to expose the 'desert of the real,' the emptiness at the heart of the American experiment. In their original form, these photos carry strong messages of community, consumer freedom, and sexual liberation: the American promise that one can 'have it all' simply by surrendering to the authority of American ideological culture and its logic of exchange. By denying this liberal narrative, Feuerhelm takes aim at the so-called 'American Dream' and formulates a fundamentally nihilistic politics that rejects the promise of a better tomorrow. It's a politics that shatters the idea of an American era, not asking whether history has come to an end, but rather questioning whether it ever truly began.