When the Clock Broke

Brought to you by Penguin.

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

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

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 punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

The early 1990s climate of despair was weaponized by con men, conspiracists and racists – notably the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke – both in the wider culture and at the ballot box. In other words, they sought to ‘break the clock’ of progress and ‘repeal the twentieth century’. They gave Americans’ resentment a shape and direction, and forged a new kind of paranoid, conspiratorial politics where harmless roguishness and vicious hate became mixed up, as well as declaring a culture war on liberal elites. It was in this moral confusion that the ‘indigenous American berserk’, as Philip Roth put it, took on new and ever-wilder forms.

In this rollicking, original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of the conspiratorial politics that birthed Donald Trump’s America.

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

© John Ganz 2025 (P) Penguin Audio 2025