When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s [Paperback]

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[A] wry and engaging account . . .When the Clock Brokeis leagues more insightful on the subjectof Trumps ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly.
Becca Rothfeld,The Washington Post

A revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan eraand their dark legacy today.

A high official in the Department of Defense is accused of running a drug trafficking operation, and the rumors reverberate. Mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani incites a riot among police officers in Lower Manhattan. The ex-Klansman and neo-Nazi David Duke runs for governor of Louisiana and wins the white vote. If the ideals that I stand for are addressed, then I will only be a footnote in history, he prophesies. But if the deterioration of the white middle class continues, then I will be president.

The early 1990s promised Americans confidence and primacy. It didnt turn out that way. As the economy contracted and anxieties about crime, immigration, and foreign competition rose, the national mood darkened. An influential group of conservative thinkers rejected globalism and called for a populist-based presidency that would save the American way of life. They sought to break the clock and repeal the twentieth century.

InWhen the Clock Broke, John Ganz dissects a country in extremis. As the Cold War consensus ended, Americans exhumed old demons and created some new ones. A culture war was declared on liberal elites, free trade was equated with the giant sucking sound of jobs lost to Mexico, and rowdy talk radio hosts forged bonds with lãÁ