The Anthropocene Reviewed

Green grew up in Orlando, just 15 miles away from Disney World. He first went in 1981 when he was four and he liked it at the time, but as he grew up, disliking Disney and other artificial, suburban things became part of his personality. In 1992, however, his mother won a community service award that came with four free season passes to Disney, and Green started going all the time. One of the attractions that he became familiar with had been there since the park’s 1971 opening: the Hall of Presidents.

The Hall of Presidents rarely has a line to get in. It is full of creepy, animatronic representations of presidents, and a few, like Abraham Lincoln, actually speak. The Hall of Presidents presents the presidents as a “proud history,” and Green partly agrees with that assessment. But he thinks there lots of other ways to interpret the history of the presidents, including shameful ones. As a teenager, Green used to like imagining a world without presidents or nation-states, but now he just imagines better nation-states, which he sees as a symptom of his age. He gives the Hall of Presidents 2 stars.