I wish I could have our friends outside the United States read this book so they can understand what is going on inside it. The book is useful for citizens inside the United States but daily events related to DOGE, budget cuts, Elon Musk, court orders being ignored and chaos from Washington DC are front and center in our minds 24 hours daily. 

Cooper does a very good of explaining the national crisis affecting the United States and its consequences to the rest of the world. He describes how the government and our political system were intended to work. And he accurately analyzes why they aren’t working. Cooper also tries to be even handed on his criticism of both political parties and their leaders.

This book will be an excellent resource for historians 20 or more years out trying to explain the craziness of our contemporary times and politics. I appreciate that this book was updated to reflect the start of the second Trump Administration.

If I have any reservations about this book, it’s that I feel that Cooper is being a bit more optimistic than I am about this country’s immediate future. Cooper writes “None of these definitions applies to Trump. He doesn’t have absolute power over the whole of government. He’s not even close to that. He remains constitutionally responsible to the people in significant and fundamental ways…The most serious domestic risk America faces with Trump as president isn’t dictatorship. It’s that the military follows his orders to break the law—to go after American citizens, for example. This scenario, however, is unlikely.”

I have the advantage of seeing how things have unfolded with in the Trump administration since the book has been published and the author may want to temper his faith in the power of our Constitution and the rationality of the Trump presidency.

Below are some notes and highlights that will provide the prospective reader of an introduction to the book and topics…

Obama’s presidency deeply unsettled and angered millions of Americans not ready for a Black president. And Trump’s hostility to minorities (sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, always cunning) drives his popularity among many Republicans, particularly in southern states.

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If the President of the United States were ever to punish disfavored speakers like the Harvard faculty, Google’s CEO, or the New York Times’ publisher, the nation would be in peril.

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The root cause of America’s twenty-first-century decline is the combination of (1) tribalism, (2) social media, and (3) a malformed political structure.

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Journalists are now disproportionately focused on writing stories that will go viral on Facebook and Twitter, a very different goal from writing stories that will educate and inform

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Americans focus little on human history, let alone absorb its lessons. And an embarrassing percentage of them don’t understand basic civics.

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Just look at the presidency. Donald Trump is grossly unfit to hold America’s highest office…The House of Representatives, moreover, is throbbing with underqualified mediocrities.

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The remedies are easy to prescribe. Americans must improve civic education in schools; raise awareness about cognitive biases throughout society; spend more time with people from other political tribes; reduce and regulate the use of social media; rework the political structure to foster more political parties and equal representation; double down on free speech; shun politically motivated prosecutions; feverishly guard election integrity; and support a new Republican champion other than Donald Trump.

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While Cooper’s remedies are easier to prescribe, they are impossible to fulfill. God bless the United States…