num_pages: 8
description:  The Washington Posts Pulitzer Prizewinning book critic uses the books of the Trump era to argue that our response to this presidency reflects the same failures of imagination that made it possible. As a book critic for The Washington Post Carlos Lozada has read some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation. Many of these hes found are more defensive than incisive more righteous than right. In What Were We Thinking Lozada uses these books to tell the story of how we understand ourselves in the Trump era using as his main characters the political ideas and debates at play in America today. He dissects works on the white working class like Hillbilly Elegy; manifestos from the anti-Trump resistance like On Tyranny and No Is Not Enough; books on race gender and identity like How to Be an Antiracist and Good and Mad; polemics on the future of the conservative movement like The Corrosion of Conservatism; and of course plenty of books about Trump himself. Lozadas argument is provocative: that many of these bookswhether written by liberals or conservatives activists or academics Trumps true believers or his harshest criticsare vulnerable to the same blind spots resentments and failures that gave us his presidency. But Lozada also highlights the books that succeed in illuminating how America is changing in the 21st century. What Were We Thinking is an intellectual history of the Trump era in real time helping us transcend the battles of the moment and see ourselves for who we really are.
language: English
title: What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era
publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio