With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America’. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

In his book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new kind of paranoid politics: how a group of con men and conspiracists declared a culture war on liberal elites, rejected ‘globalism’ and called for a ‘populist based presidency’. Trumpism was struggling to be born.

The talk is taking place in the Safra Lecture Theatre and will be followed by a reception.

SPEAKER

John Ganz is the author of the widely acclaimed Unpopular Front newsletter for Substack and writes a monthly column for the Nation. He is the author of the NY Times bestseller When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, New Republic, New Statesman and other publications.