Petrified Forest

Fear, says Lewis Lapham, is America’s top-selling consumer product

‘The Temptation of Saint Anthony’ (detail) by David Teniers the Younger, 1640–60, via Rijksmuseum

By Lewis H. Lapham

Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat…