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

Description

“John Ganz is the most important young political writer of his generationjust the one our dark moment needs.” Rick Perlstein

“Lively and kaleidoscopic.” Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker

A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan eraand their dark legacy today.

With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. 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 When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of Americas 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 Perots 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 Warera 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 narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.

Author Information

John Ganz writes the widely-acclaimed Unpopular Front newsletter for Substack. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Artforum, the New Statesman, and other publications.