Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy Hardcover – August 11, 2020

This book probably won't be everyone's cup of tea for the obvious reason it spreads blame for the current state of discourse in American politics around. While it concentrates heavily on the behavior of the current occupant of the Presidency, the book is as much about what put him there as what has happened since he was elected. I fully acknowledge that many won't agree with my point, but no political party or ideology comes out of the authors' analysis unscathed.Where the book is particularly valuable is in its survey of periods in American history where challenges--termed threats to democracy--arose and how the nation made its way past those challenges. One of the problems with current discourse is that it looks to the past as some Golden Age without realizing the undercurrents that existed during those times (both sides do this). No period in our nation's history is pristine and devoid of warts and the authors do a good job of picking out eras when there were considerable obstacles to surmount.

I read it because it was so highly recommended by Rachel Maddow, and it is a great book, on a topic that fascinates me--the four greatest threat to American Democracy from out past.

This was a very enlightening book about several periods of American history that I had not understood - the Alien and Sedition Act, the election of 1800, the mechanisms for the failure of Reconstruction, and the environment around FDRs presidency. I feel like the civil war has been beaten to death as has Nixon’s presidency, but that may be my bias.Some parts of the book where very interesting. The framework is valuable, a list of four threats, but is not fully substantiated by evidence. I agree for example that economic inequality is terrible for a democracy but did not find it adequately defended in this book, it felt like a stretch.I liked the pillars of democracy as a better framework for understanding how a democracy falls apart more than these four threats.PBS recently had a documentary about the rise of Nazis - if you like this book and are curious how democracies fail, it’s a great documentary. It gives a real emotional sense of how things fall apart.I started this book before the election. Biden has won, which should make me hopeful, but I’m not. And this book gives me the language to understand why I am still nervous about the US.

Ironically enough, as alarming as this book is, and as much as I put off reading it because I am terrified that we've just gone through something that may continue to undermine our democracy and reverberate for decades to come, I actually felt a little bit of hope reading it. The authors go through four different events in US history where democracy came very close to being dismantled, and point out why it happened. A lot of the information in this book isn't taught in history classes, so it was eye opening to me. But, on the flip side, it was a good way to see that when all hope is lost, there's still a chance that things may turn around. I hope we can get it together once again like we have at least four times since the US became a country.

“Four Threats” is one of the best books I have read concerning the political party twists and turns that lead us to our present stalemate. If you are at all concerned about our democracy and wish to understand our current state, please read this book!

Books written by academics often have a difficult time finding their audience, and this is one of those books. It falls into this awkward middle ground where it's too short, too broad, and lacking too much detail to be valuable for history buffs and academics, but it's also not well-written enough that I would recommend this to a friend who isn't already interested in US history and democracy. This isn't to say it's poorly written, but it's not a page turner like some history books are.Their thesis is compelling, but I don't think you can write a complete history of threats to democracy without a thorough discussion of the Jim Crow south and the civil rights movement. I don't think you can write a complete history of executive aggrandizement without talking about the Kennedy administration, RFK's actions as AG, and Cuba. I don't think you can write a complete history of political polarization without talking about Newt Gingrich and the Clinton impeachment trials, or Bush v. Gore, or the Tea Party movement in MUCH more detail (Newt and the Tea Party get about 2 paragraphs each).I understand that including all of that would make this a 600-page book, but that's my point. Either they needed to commit to a long book, or tighten up the writing and the narrative arc. A tighter focus on the present era (e.g. starting with Kennedy) would have allowed for the authors to maintain their main thesis while speaking more to our current problems and telling a story without as many pieces missing.Overall, I think the book is fine. If you want a quick introduction to the ebbs and flows of American democracy, you can do worse than this book. But I think you'll find more compelling works elsewhere that are written at this level, such as by Carol Anderson, Alexander Keyssar, and Howard Zinn.

The historical description of the five crises is interesting and very well written. The selection of the four threat criteria provides a useful conceptual framework for assessing democratic institutional performance. However, the book’s value was not fully realized as lessons learned from addressing each of the instances of threats in chapters 2 through 6 were not analyzed systematically. Further, chapter 9 should have provided a sharp synthesis of specific conclusions gleaned through review of history on how the threats had been addressed in the past and could be addressed in the future. For example, what explains variation in political polarization over time? Overall, this is a valuable point of departure for analyzing an extremely important set of issues.

If you think trump a total zealot and want removal of the electoral college this is your book at the end