Crossing the Rubicon

Mark Danner, one of our most astute political journalists, has worked ceaselessly for the past quarter of a century to report on the state of American politics. Crossing the Rubicon collects Danner’s best essays, which depict with uncanny prescience the erosion of democratic institutions and the inexorable rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. From the Bush–Gore election to the War on Terror and torture at Abu Ghraib to the election of Donald Trump, Danner traces just how we came to be where we are today in this increasingly polarized and partisan world. Included in this collection are finely detailed portraits of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the masterminds behind the Iraq War, as well as searing critiques of mass media’s outsized role in politics. Together, these timely and provocative essays provide an overview of the decline and fall of liberal America, as well as the advent of a new and disturbing barbarism.