Tripwires

In a trenchant work of nonfiction, the #1 New York Times bestselling author identifies a series of self-inflicted wounds on our body politic that have led to the current moment, and shows us how we can undo the harm

Reagan: His Life and Legend

bestseller-combines fifteen fateful moments in the past quarter-century with an immersive narrative of the underlying economic, cultural, and political developments that made these tripwires so profoundly consequential.

Starting with the Supreme Court intervention that awarded George W. Bush the presidency, Patterson examines the often under-appreciated turning points that helped undermine our polity, from the accidental accession of John Roberts as Chief Justice and the ruin wreaked by America's subprime mortgages, to Donald Trump's demand to see Barack Obama's birth certificate, Marco Rubio's sabotage of his own immigration reform bill, and Mitch McConnell's refusal to convict Trump for his attempted coup-culimating in the ultimate betrayal of our constitutional democracy: the Roberts Court's invitation to unbounded presidential power.

Patterson's near-encyclopedic knowledge of recent U.S. history along with his political acumen and training as a trial lawyer allow him to distill cause and effect in a deeply synthetic way, building to a comprehensive account of the perverse compound of ignorance, corruption, racism, religiosity, plutocracy, and authoritarianism wrought by Trump's return to power. He concludes with a detailed program for establishing a truly equitable and democratic society, offering hope for America's future.