American Carnage
On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump
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American Carnage
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Narrated by:
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Jason Culp
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By:
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Tim Alberta
About this listen
Politico Magazine’s chief political correspondent provides a rollicking insider’s look at the making of the modern Republican Party - how a decade of cultural upheaval, populist outrage, and ideological warfare made the GOP vulnerable to a hostile takeover from the unlikeliest of insurgents: Donald J. Trump.
The 2016 election was a watershed for the United States. But, as Tim Alberta explains in American Carnage, to understand Trump’s victory is to view him not as the creator of this era of polarization and bruising partisanship, but rather as its most manifest consequence.
American Carnage is the story of a president’s rise based on a country’s evolution and a party’s collapse. As George W. Bush left office with record-low approval ratings and Barack Obama led a Democratic takeover of Washington, Republicans faced a moment of reckoning: They had no vision, no generation of new leaders, and no energy in the party’s base. Yet Obama’s forceful pursuit of his progressive agenda, coupled with the nation’s rapidly changing cultural and demographic landscape, lit a fire under the right, returning Republicans to power and inviting a bloody struggle for the party’s identity in the post-Bush era. The factions that emerged - one led by absolutists like Jim Jordan and Ted Cruz, the other led by pragmatists like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell - engaged in a series of devastating internecine clashes and attempted coups for control. With the GOP’s internal fissures rendering it legislatively impotent, and that impotence fueling a growing resentment toward the political class and its institutions, the stage was set for an outsider to crash the party. When Trump descended a gilded escalator to announce his run in the summer of 2015, the candidate had met the moment.
Only by viewing Trump as the culmination of a decade-long civil war inside the Republican Party - and of the parallel sense of cultural, socioeconomic, and technological disruption during that period - can we appreciate how he won the White House and consider the fundamental questions at the center of America’s current turmoil. How did a party obsessed with the national debt vote for trillion-dollar deficits and record-setting spending increases? How did the party of compassionate conservatism become the party of Muslim bans and walls? How did the party of family values elect a thrice-divorced philanderer? And, most important, how long can such a party survive?
Loaded with exclusive reporting and based off hundreds of interviews - including with key players such as President Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, and Reince Priebus, and many others - American Carnage takes us behind the scenes of this tumultuous period as we’ve never seen it before and establishes Tim Alberta as the premier chronicler of this political era.
©2019 Tim Alberta (P)2019 HarperAudioListeners also enjoyed...
What listeners say about American Carnage
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Kindle Customer
- 26-09-19
EXCELLENT
This is essential reading for any enthusiast of Repubkican Party history. Very well researched. TD
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Tobias Engberg
- 22-08-19
Just super
I think everything about this book is fantastic, just fantastic. All the persons featured come alive in a spectacular way.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Callum hynd
- 02-02-23
A party in flux
Personally I really enjoyed this sweeping narrative not of Trump but of the Republican party, I feel the focus is where it should be and the thoughts from the horse's mouth intriguing
but I can't help but feel a little (blue balled isn't the right phrase here)... I feel the book became rapidly buried under the events that immediately succeeded it. I understand that no one could've guesses what was to come but I feel this was only the first maybe second acts of the story and the real watershed is right round the corner
still do recommend
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Nick Twine
- 07-11-20
Comprehensive, Gripping, Cautionary
Everyone gripped by the recent election must read this book., especially as Trump lost and there are so many forks in the road to ponder.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- K. Tobin
- 22-11-19
Absolutely essential
If you're a fair minded individual not stuck in a far left or far right echo chamber this is a must. The endless fume and outrage over world politics is absolutely exhausting, it doesn't just exist in the right wing tabloids, even reading below the line comments in broadsheets like the FT and The Guardian is full of intellectual "I'm more intelligent than you" dick swinging from keyboard warriors too afraid to get into the arena and be the change that they want to see, or take time to understand those who they don't 100% agree with.
The author takes an absolutely fair minded and unbiased viewpoint of the last ten years outlining the increased radicalisation of American politics and society (focussing specifically on the Republican Party) which led to the shameful Trump regime. 26 hours' listening but such an important book.
Shock horror for those who only ever read The Guardian too, there have been some genuinely decent and fair minded Republicans who have served the GOP since Obama was President, they are not all swivel eyed loony racists. And not every action or policy that the Democrats took was correct, they are human too.
Well done Tim, a book that will be as important many years in the future as it is now to understand the sad silos in modern society and how people with different views cannot respect each other anymore.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 15-10-20
Comprehensive but flawed
While this title certainly is detailed, with considerable effort and access going into its creation, ultimately it was disappointing as it does not provide impartial analysis of its subject matter.
At several points where a cold eyed assessment would have best served, we are instead subjected to a treatise on the author’s own world view - a world view which seems dated at times and partially misguided at others.
This book isn’t an independent review of the Republican Party through the prism of events and its main actors since the turn of the century. Rather it seems like a review seen through the eyes of a writer who wishes to put ‘traditional conservatism’ on a pedestal and who holds an indoctrinated view of American exceptionalism which seems several decades out of date.
The author goes out of his way to paint an over the top defence of his own political favourites while not casting a sufficiently critical eye on their flaws or accountability for subsequent problems.
Basically if you want a rewritten history of the Republican Party which heroes the likes of Boehner, Ryan and Romney is what you’re after then you’ll like this book. If you want something more balanced then this needs to be read/ heard through that perspective.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
- Richard L.
- 21-02-24
UNADULTERATED RUBISH.
THE LIES AND DISINFORMATION JUST IN THE 1ST CHAPTER SET THE TONE FOR THIS RIDICULOUS GARBAGE.
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