Stephen Marche published this book in 2022, before Trump’s re-election to a second term, but the experience of the first term—with its anger, disrespect, and constant questioning—is very much present in his catalog of ways in which the United States might come to blows. The book is based in case studies developed by other scholars, which makes its tone of inevitability even more infuriating. Of course the country is coming apart, he asserts, nothing lasts forever after all, and the only question is how violent and devastating it will be to the populace. His policy prescriptions are few: a new constitutional Congress and the vague recommendation that Americans stop assuming someone else will take care of our disunity. He ends on a hopeful note, one that seems out of keeping with the rest of the book, and perhaps it is necessary to overstate the case to get the reader’s attention. But it is tough going at a moment of extreme anxiety about the possibility of authoritarianism, a possibility he doesn’t really consider.

Not to publisher: no index?!