When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present

BBC foreign correspondent Bryant (Confessions from Correspondentland) delivers a revealing outsider’s perspective on the roots of America’s current state of “disunion.” Recalling his first trip to the U.S. as a 16-year-old in 1984, Bryant describes falling in love with “the bigness, the boldness, and the brashness of this land of plenty,” yet notes that the seeds for the Trump era were then being sown by President Ronald Reagan, “who elevated the stature of the presidency [but] also ended up dumbing it down,” and by the country’s rampant consumerism and “winner-takes-all ethos.” As a student at MIT during the 1988 presidential campaign, Bryant was shocked by the effectiveness of George H.W. Bush’s negative campaign ads against Michael Dukakis, which accelerated the trend of “candidates deliberately [seeking] to divide the country.” Bryant also critiques President Obama for failing to push back forcefully against Republican obstructionism in Congress, and casts himself with other journalists who missed the clues—including increased racial divisions and lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton—to Trump’s victory in 2016. Though he trods familiar ground, Bryant’s pithy observations (“[Trump] was a revivalist who did not specify precisely what he was trying to revive”) offer fresh insight. This well-informed portrait of American dysfunction hits home. (Mar.)