The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover.

by Writers of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (Introduction), Anne Applebaum (Afterword), Cullen Murphy (Editor)

Overview

Some of America’s best reporters and thinkers offer an urgent look at a country in chaos in this collection of timely, often prophetic articles from The Atlantic.

The past four years in the United States have been among the most turbulent in our history—and would have been so even without a global pandemic and waves of protest nationwide against police violence. Drawn from the recent work of The Atlantic staff writers and contributors, The American Crisis explores the factors that led us to the present moment: racial division, economic inequality, political dysfunction, the hollowing out of government, the devaluation of truth, and the unique threat posed by Donald Trump. Today’s emergencies expose pathologies years in the making.

Featuring leading voices from The Atlantic, one of the country’s most widely read and influential magazines, The American Crisis is a broad and essential look at the condition of America today—and at the qualities of national character that may yet offer hope.

With contributions by: Danielle Allen, Anne Applebaum, Yoni Appelbaum, Molly Ball, David W. Blight, Mark Bowden, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lizabeth Cohen, McKay Coppins, James Fallows, Drew Gilpin Faust, Caitlin Flanagan, Franklin Foer, David Frum, Megan Garber, Michael Gerson, Elizabeth Goitein, David A. Graham, Emma Green, Yuval Noah Harari, Ibram X. Kendi, Olga Khazan, Adrienne LaFrance, Annie Lowrey, James Mattis, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Angela Nagle, Vann R. Newkirk II, George Packer, Elaina Plott, Jeremy Raff, Jonathan Rauch, Adam Serwer, Clint Smith, Matthew Stewart, Alex Wagner, Tara Westover, and Ed Yong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781982157043
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	670,809
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

With contributions by: Danielle Allen, Anne Applebaum, Yoni Appelbaum, Molly Ball, David W. Blight, Mark Bowden, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Lizabeth Cohen, McKay Coppins, James Fallows, Drew Gilpin Faust, Caitlin Flanagan, Franklin Foer, David Frum, Megan Garber, Michael Gerson, Elizabeth Goitein, David A. Graham, Emma Green, Yuval Noah Harari, Ibram X. Kendi, Olga Khazan, Adrienne LaFrance, Annie Lowrey, James Mattis, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Angela Nagle, Vann R. Newkirk II, George Packer, Elaina Plott, Jeremy Raff, Jonathan Rauch, Adam Serwer, Clint Smith, Matthew Stewart, Alex Wagner, Tara Westover, and Ed Yong.

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic. Before taking on this role, he spent nearly a decade covering politics and foreign policy as a staff writer for the magazine. Previously, Goldberg was a Middle East correspondent and the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker, and a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He is a recipient of the National Magazine Award for reporting, and is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian. Her books Gulag: A History; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956; and Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine have appeared in more than two dozen translations. Her most recent book is Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Applebaum is a former columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Cullen Murphy is the editor at large of The Atlantic and a former managing editor of the magazine. He has also been the editor at large of Vanity Fair. His books include The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own; Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America; God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World; and Cartoon County: My Father and His Friends in the Golden Age of Make-Believe.

Table of Contents

Introduction Jeffrey Goldberg 1

Section I Falling Apart

"When the Next Plague Hits," Ed Yong 11

"The Birth of a New American Aristocracy," Matthew Stewart 19

"Left Behind," Tara Westover Jeffrey Goldberg 37

"Red State, Blue City," David A. Graham 43

"Carry Me Back," Drew Gilpin Faust 51

"Being Black in America Can Be Hazardous to Your Health," Olga Khazan 69

"The Undocumented Agent," Jeremy Raff 81

"Brotherhood of Losers," Angela Nagle 91

"The Most Expensive Weather Year Ever," Annie Lowrey 99

"The Prophecies of Q," Adrienne LaFrance 107

"They Had It Coming," Caitlin Flanagan 125

"A Warning From Europe," Anne Applebaum 143

Section II The Failure of Politics

"Newt Gingrich Says You're Welcome," McKay Coppins 173

"What's Ailing American Politics?," Jonathan Rauch 187

"American Hustler," Franklin Foer 201

"The Battle for North Carolina," Vann R. Newkirk II 225

"How America Ends," Yoni Appelbaum 241

"The Last Temptation " Michael Gerson 255

"Why Technology Favors Tyranny," Yuval Noah Harari 275

"In Case of Emergency," Elizabeth Goitein 289

"The Enemy Within," James Mattis 303

Section III The Age of Trump

"The Coronavirus Called America's Bluff," Anne Applebaum 315

"Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear," Molly Ball 323

"The First White President," Ta-Nehisi Coates 331

"The Republican Party Moves From Family Values to White Nationalism," Alex Wagner 355

"Am I an American?," Ibram X. Kendi 361

"The World Burns. Sarah Sanders Says This Is Fine," Megan Garber 369

"How to Destroy a Government," George Packer 377

"How to Build an Autocracy," David Frum 405

"General Chaos," Mark Bowden 423

"Inside Ivanka's Dreamworld," Elaina Plott 435

"Will Beth Moore Lose Her Flock?," Emma Green 451

"The Cruelty Is the Point," Adam Serwer 459

"The Last Day of My Old Life," Caitlin Flanagan 465

"Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter," Clint Smith 471

Section IV Becoming Citizens Again

"The Lessons of the Great Depression," Lizabeth Cohen 481

"The Road From Serfdom," Danielle Allen 493

"In the Fall of Rome, Good News for America," James Fallows 509

"The Possibility of America," David W. Blight 517

"What Art Can Do," Lin-Manuel Miranda 525

Afterword: "Between Bravado and Despair," Anne Applebaum 531

Acknowledgments 537

Index 539

Editorial Reviews

"Forty incisive essays from an impressive roster of contributors....An illuminating collection of perceptive, well-argued, and compelling essays."
—Kirkus, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2020-07-14
Essayists reflect on the current state of the nation.

In keeping with the Atlantic’s goal of “debating and illuminating America’s meaning and purpose,” editor at large Murphy gathers 40 incisive essays from an impressive roster of contributors. “How did we get here?” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg asks in his introduction. “How did our politics become so appalling and dispiriting? How did a system meant to elevate the most qualified among us instead place a grifter in Lincoln’s house? How did the gaps between rich and poor, men and women, black and white, immigrant and American-born, become so profound?” The essays are grouped into four sections: the first looks at “underlying conditions of society as a whole that have been deteriorating for decades.” The second examines the failure of politics; the third covers the disastrous Trump presidency; and the last focuses on the possibility for the nation’s reinvention. Contributors consider issues such as racial inequality, cultural divides and polarization, climate change, voter suppression, the plight of undocumented immigrants, and evangelical Christians, who regard themselves, "hysterically and with self-pity, as an oppressed minority that requires a strongman to rescue it.” Former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust melds history with a memoir of her childhood in Virginia, “a world in which silences distorted lives, and falsehoods perpetuated structures of power rooted in centuries of injustice.” In a moving portrait of a Baltimore resident struggling with health problems, staff writer Olga Khazan sees that “America’s racist and segregationist history continues to harm black people in the most intimate of ways—seeping into their lungs, their blood, even their DNA.” Caitlin Flanagan rails against rich parents’ sense of entitlement, which she experienced firsthand as a guidance counselor at a tony prep school. Among many unsettling pieces are profiles of Newt Gingrich, Paul Manafort, Ivanka Trump, and, most disturbingly, conspiracy theorists enraptured with QAnon. Other top-notch contributors include Anne Applebaum, George Packer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, and Yuval Noah Harari.

An illuminating collection of perceptive, well-argued, and compelling essays.

Kirkus Reviews