Well researched and heavy with information this book works through America’s modern history within the setting of each administration, including of course the Trump fiasco. Interspersed with the authors own memories and reflections this book becomes a potted history in readable format. Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy of this book.

Starting with Reagan, this book analyses the ins and outs of each presidential reign with some fantastic analysis. He lays out the scene of how these Presidents, the decisions they made and the cultures that they made helped to lay the pathway for Trump to take up spot in the White House - yes, including Obama!

Although the political insight is detailed and insightful, Bryant writes this in an accessible way and so you don't need to have intricate understanding of US Politics in order to pick it up. Bryant ends on the most somber of notes, that the way forward doesn't seem much, if at all, brighter.

What just happened?
This is essentially the gist of the question answered in this excellent book by experienced BBC journalist and author, Nick Bryant.
For in 2016, billionaire reality TV star, Donald Trump was elected US president having promised to “make America great again.” It was not an original slogan, but it clearly resonated with the US electorate. We now know, of course, that the outcome was the exact opposite of what Trump promised. His presidency was an unmitigated disaster for both the US and the world. Compared to where it stood in the middle of the last decade, America’s standing both at home and abroad has been dramatically diminished.
Trump never said, of course, when exactly in history he considered the US to have been great in the first place.
As the starting point of his narrative, Bryant takes us back to 1984, the time of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, Ronald Reagan’s re-election and his own first youthful trip to the USA, “the summertime of American resurgence.” Bryant doesn’t gloss over Reagan’s weaknesses at all. He was essentially a film star in the White House just as Trump was a TV star and let his Hollywood-inspired concerns about ‘little green men’ and belief in astrology influence the content of potentially vital US-Soviet summits.
But 1984 was certainly a period when the USA seemed to stand tall. Bryant’s book is essentially the story of how conditions gradually shifted over the next 32 years resulting in the disaster of Trumpism, the unhappy period which dominates the last third of the book.
Reagan was partly to blame. Bryant argues “Reagan created a flawed blueprint, and showed that a president could achieve historical greatness without even mastering some of the basics of the job.” The Clintons were not blameless either. Bill’s behaviour set a new lower standard for the basic minimum morality requirement expected of a chief executive. Hilary didn’t help either by seeming almost insulted at the idea of having to assert her leadership credentials before such an unworthy foe in 2016. Her arrogant dismissal of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” also did her immeasurable damage. George W. Bush was also at fault, setting a new low for the standard of presidential crisis response after Hurricane Katrina after 2006 which foreshadowed Trump’s own woeful response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Bush’s absurdly premature “mission accomplished” celebration of victory aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003 also set a new standard for ‘fake news’. The war in Iraq still had a very long way to run.
Even Obama is partly to blame. In retrospect, his public goading of Trump at various Washington Correspondents’ Dinners, though often very funny, may have unwittingly provoked him into running. Obama, Bryant argues, also too often backed away from confronting genuine foreign policy challenges in Libya and Syria. Obama was genuinely an economically successful president, but the fact is many American voters didn’t feel the effects. The US was in many ways much poorer in 2017 than it had been twenty-five years earlier. Many Americans polled in 2016, incorrectly believed that they were still in recession.
Now they really are. None of this is to excuse Trump himself of ultimate responsibility for the disaster of his presidency. All the chief executives named, after all, had redeeming features. Trump has none. This book merely explains how these and other factors such as a growing sense of partisan division, the rise of Twitter, the deeply flawed electoral college system and a complacent media keen to flatter Trump by endlessly suggesting he run for president and which infected by “good story bias” garnished Trump with an endless supply of free publicity enabling him to win and make the resulting nightmare possible.

Brilliant, entertaining overview of US presidents since Reagan, written by BBC US correspondent. It is definitely a must-read for everyone. I could describe it as 'unputdownable'!

It clarifies many aspects of US politics, and gives a very clear picture of all presidents from Reagan to Trump - revealing that all had, or have, feet of clay to a greater or lesser extent. And as we get closer to 2021 there are shocking moments, laugh-out loud ones, and ones that would be better on 'reality TV.

Highly recommended.

With thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for an ARC.

Very clear and straightforward account of how America ended up so divided. While it confirmed a lot of my suspicions, it added a lot of context and detail. Would recommend.