Thirteen Cracks

For a clear-eyed look at the state of US democracy, read the book by Allan Lichtman that Foreword says takes a welcome nonpartisan, straightforward approachAmerica’s founders feared a president like Donald Trump. Through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they erected a fortified but constrained government to secure the benchmarks of our democracy and established the guardrails designed to protect it. But Trump pushed almost every one of the Framers’ safeguards to its limit—most held, but some broke under the weight of presidential abuses even the Framers did not foresee. Thirteen Cracks will be the first book to expose the most vulnerable areas in our democracy, explain in historical context how President Trump uniquely and outrageously exploited these weak spots, and propose a fix for each challenge. Historian Allan J. Lichtman argues that Trump has put us at a pivot point in our history, where the survival of American democracy is at stake. But this is also an historic opportunity to shore up the vulnerabilities and to strengthen our democracy.