When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present

by Nick Bryant

Book Overview

'Nick Bryant is brilliant. He has a way of showing you what you've been missing from the whole story whilst never leaving you feeling stupid.' - Emily Maitlis

'Bryant is a genuine rarity, a Brit who understands America' - Washington Post

In When America Stopped Being Great, veteran reporter and BBC New York correspondent Nick Bryant reveals how America's decline paved the way for Donald Trump's rise, sowing division and leaving the country vulnerable to its greatest challenge of the modern era.

Deftly sifting through almost four decades of American history, from post-Cold War optimism, through the scandal-wracked nineties and into the new millennium, Bryant unpacks the mistakes of past administrations, from Ronald Reagan's 'celebrity presidency' to Barack Obama's failure to adequately address income and racial inequality. He explains how the historical clues, unseen by many (including the media) paved the way for an outsider to take power and a country to slide towards disaster. As Bryant writes, 'rather than being an aberration, Trump's presidency marked the culmination of so much of what had been going wrong in the United States for decades - economically, racially, politically, culturally, technologically and constitutionally.'

A personal elegy for an America lost, unafraid to criticise actors on both sides of the political divide, When America Stopped Being Great takes the long view, combining engaging storytelling with recent history to show how the country moved from the optimism of Reagan's 'Morning in America' to the darkness of Trump's 'American Carnage'.

It concludes with some of the most dramatic events in recent memory, in an America torn apart by a bitterly polarised election, racial division, the national catastrophe of the coronavirus and the threat to US democracy evidenced by the storming of Capitol Hill.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1399404997
• ISBN13: 9781399404990
• Release Date: November 2022
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 5.3" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Make America Great?

When America Stopped Being Great is a historic chronicle of the past fifty years how America come to stop even with Trump campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”, an idea stolen from Patrick Buchanan twenty five years prior. A black two terms president is proud of his Obamacare and killing of bin Ladan but racial equality did not improve. As Nick said in the book: rather than an aberration, Trump’s presidency marked the culmination of wrongs in the past decades – economically, racially, politically, culturally, technologically and constitutionally. Democracy become ugly as militia intended to abduct the governor as she did her virus shut down. Mr. Trump motivated his supporters with arms in attempting to change the fair and open presidential election. American will send American to help American for the sake of democracy – it is an insurrection with gun barrels! He even claims presidential right to refuse his war room direction documents. He demand government officials loyal to him personally not the constitution. When did America degenerate into a Trump authoritarian Dynasty? This book is a wake up call: United we stand, Divide we fall, red and blue, yin and yang, republican and democrat, United States or Disunited States?