John Ganz takes his title to the test while he takes us back and forth disorientingly  through the period of American politics that attempted to bring us to tomorrow while reverting to yesterday. He does this through the thorough biographies of key (racist and classist) politicians of the late 80s and early 90s—David Duke, Pat Buchanan, Rudy Giuliani—managing to make John Gotti, Ross Perot, and even Bill Clinton look sort of cool and reasonable through the spectre of populism. Still, the book left me overstuffed on five-dollar words and extensive quotations mostly relating to campaigning and conspiracies, rather than going deeper into the economic policy and its long (or I guess it’s rather short) term effect. A lot of chapters were sharp and illuminating—my favorite was the bit about Gotti—but a lot of them were straight-up misplaced vignettes. Is it demeaning when I say that my takeaway is apt for a book whose author is most known for his clever substack?