When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists and the Origins of Trumpism

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER PICK

A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era

‘When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly’ Washington Post

‘A fascinating, provocative challenge to our age – passionate, unexpected, illuminating’ Rory Stewart

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 this original and often hilarious 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.

A rollicking exposé of the end of the post-World War II order, this book shows the advent of a new, more berserk America.

‘Terrific . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core’ New York Times

One of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024
One of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024