When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s Audiobook

A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era—and their dark legacy today

With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

In this book, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the “paleo-con” right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserk” took new and ever-wilder forms.

In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War–era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the “Middle American Radicals” whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.

In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz describes the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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“[A] sparkling new history of the 1990s…Offers a starkly different interpretation of the decade, arguing that it is really the origin point for our present ‘politics of national despair.’”

— Chronicle of Higher Education