When America Stopped Being Great: A History of the Present
£10.70£12.30 (-13%)
‘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.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Continuum (18 Aug. 2022) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 384 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1399404997 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1399404990 |
| Dimensions | 19.3 x 2.29 x 12.7 cm |
by Amazon Customer
This book has been both informative and interesting. As an English man I spent 3 months in LA in 1992 and was a bystander in the run in to the presidential election.
by Gazzarian
Towards the end of the book, Mr Bryant chides himself for perhaps overdoing memoir rather than commentary. That’s overly self critical, but it does highlight an issue with his book that others, when praising his external perspective, don’t seem to have mentioned. Fintan O’Toole writes brilliantly about the English lived experience from his external view as a sort of embedded Irish journalist, whilst Doris Kearns Goodwin’s magisterial presidential histories focus purely on her subjects, their personalities and circumstances and the drivers of their decisions. This book feels like a sort of mash up of both approaches. And it’s written from a sort of liberal progressive viewpoint which, because I share that, left me feeling a bit unchallenged and empty after I’d finished it.
I do agree with the others that it’s a valuable contribution, especially when, for example, he highlights the weaknesses of Obama and delivers an even handed (if necessarily secondary) summary of Reagan. He is at his best when he talks about what he knows best, which is the effect that the changing nature of news media has had on electoral outcomes. On the other hand his strategic analysis is a bit patchy and the bits about his own American experiences are not really helpful when the USA is so huge, multifarious and diverse. We know about polarisation and inequality, nothing new to see here. There is an extended documentary towards the end of what Trump did, which will be old news (well, recent enough to be painful) to anyone with sufficient interest to read this in the first place, he has no particularly fresh insights to offer here.
So, yes it’s good and very readable, I just felt it would have been even better with a tighter focus on the areas where he has great knowledge and expertise.
by Ian
This is an outstanding book, both lyrical and insightful. In a crowded market of books purporting to analyse Trump’s rise and America’s decline, Nick Bryant succeeds by examining the events of the past few decades, and he does so using a combination of clear prose and powerful imagery. As a television reporter tasked with writing a concise summary, he knows words can never be wasted, which makes his book a pleasure to read. I thought I was something of an expert on American politics, but on almost every page, he taught me something new, or reminded me of events I had forgotten. After a couple of chapters I began to wish that I had a highlighting pen to record my favourite lines, but if I had done so, too many pages would have been vandalised with vivid yellow.
What makes his conclusions all the more devastating is he approaches the subject as a lover of America, not a lifelong sceptic. His book reads like a farewell to an old friend.
by ILW
Enjoyable read. Convincing accounts and arguments. Balanced and fair..
by Dee H
This book was easy to read and made some interesting points about recent US history but the author’s BBC background and conventional thinking mean there are no real insights. He concedes that Donald Trump did not cause America’s decline all by himself, and that it started with Ronald Reagan and continued with every president after him. However, he does not seem to consider that America’s aggressive and interventionist foreign policy had very much to do with it. On the contrary, he appears to believe that America’s current inability to bend non-allied countries like Russia and China to its will is a bad thing, and he does not voice any disapproval of the mass murder that the US has been engaged in throughout its history, when it was, presumably, “great”. The enormous wealth disparity in the country, racial issues, police brutality, mass incarceration, either get brief mentions or nothing. The author appears to be completely oblivious to American hypocrisy on human rights (it only criticizes its enemies like Iran or North Korea, but never its friends like Israel or Saudi Arabia) or the impact this has on the view the rest of the world takes of it. The author does not seem to be completely convinced that America is no longer “great” so save your money and buy something written by someone more objective.
by James
Very well written , this book educated me about American politics during my formative early , confirmed my thinking on the wasted Obama years and then there was Trump … he tells the story matter of factly, and dispassionately educates with absolutely no sign of him using his own pulpit. Thought provoking , exciting and just a little scary. My book of the year so far
by big man Al
Interesting but with some parts heavy going.
Would have liked more on Trump.
by James
Many years from now Nick Bryant’s “When America stopped being great” will be read as a true testament to the decline and fall of America. With the insight of a great journalist and the skill of an accomplished historian I commend this book to all.