ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST 'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2024 One of The New York Times 's 100 Notable
Books of 2024 Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award AN INSTANT NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLER | National Indie Bestseller A Barack Obama summer reading pick One of
Publishers Weekly 's ten best books of 2024 "Terrific . . . Vibrant . . . When the Clock
Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflag gingly entertaining while never losing sight of
its moral core." -Jennifer Szalai The New York Times (Editors' Choice) "John Ganz is a
fantastic writer . . . [ When the Clock Broke ] is phenomenal . . . truly truly great." -Chris
Hayes Why Is This Happening? podcast " When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on
the subject of Trump's 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 era-and their dark legacy today. With the Soviet Union extinct Saddam Hussein
defeated and U.S. power at its zenith the early 1990s promised a "kinder gentler America."
Instead it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil anticipating the polarization
and resurgent extremism we know today. In When the Clock Broke the acclaimed political
writer John Ganz tells the story of America's late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals
in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists
the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the
"paleo-con" right Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the "indigenous
American berserk" took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign Pat Buchanan's and Ross
Perot's insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment all while Americans
struggled through recession alarm about racial and social change the specter of a new power
in Asia and the end of Cold War-era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged and
intellectuals and activists strove to understand the "Middle American Radicals" whose
alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new vital center
though it would not hold for long. In a rollicking eye-opening book Ganz narrates the fall
of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.
