Our democracy is under assault from homegrown authoritarians with most observers blaming
Donald Trump and the Republican Party that submitted to him. Yet as Adam Jentleson shows the
problem not only goes back to the nineteenth century but is less about the presidency than it
is about our nation's most venerated institution: the United States Senate. A revelatory
history of minority rule in America as expressed through the Senate filibuster Kill Switch
shows that white conservatives have long relied on the filibuster-which is not featured in the
Constitution and which as Jentleson demonstrates the Framers would have opposed-to shut down
attempts to create a multiracial democracy. Featuring a new epilogue on filibuster battles
under the Biden administration Kill Switch will remain an essential warning about the costs of
empowering this nation's right-wing minority. . Jentleson understands the inner workings of the
institution down to the most granular details showing precisely how arcane procedural rules
can be leveraged to dramatic effect. -Jennifer Szalai New York Times . Careful and thorough
and exacting. -Michael Tomasky New York Review of Books . [An] excellent surprising new book.
-Benjamin Wallace-Wells The New Yorker
