New York Review Books

Crossing the Rubicon
The Betrayal of American Democracy, 2000–2026
Event format: 40 minute in dialogue with Emeritus Professor Michael Pollan + 20 min Audience Q&A.

About the Book
Mark Danner, one of our most astute political journalists, has worked ceaselessly for the past quarter of a century to report on the state of American politics. Crossing the Rubicon collects Danner’s best essays, which depict with uncanny prescience the erosion of democratic institutions and the inexorable rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. From the Bush–Gore election to the War on Terror and torture at Abu Ghraib to the election of Donald Trump, Danner traces just how we came to be where we are today in this increasingly polarized and partisan world. Included in this collection are finely detailed portraits of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the masterminds behind the Iraq War, as well as searing critiques of mass media’s outsized role in politics. Together, these timely and provocative essays provide an overview of the decline and fall of liberal America, as well as the advent of a new and disturbing barbarism.

[Crossing the Rubicon] is a searing indictment of American politics since 2000 . . . Writing with a light touch—[Danner] prefers to record his impressions while hustling across the country in rented convertibles—he keeps asking the same probing question: Why have the institutions of the American Republic not provided better safeguards against recent abuse by ‘grifters and fools?’
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

About Mark Danner

Mark Danner

Mark Danner has been writing about foreign wars and American politics for more than three decades. Among his books are The Massacre at El Mozote, Stripping Bare the Body, and Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for many years and is a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has received many honors, including a National Magazine Award, three Overseas Press Awards, a Guggenheim, an Emmy, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently Class of 1961 Distinguished Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California at Berkeley.