The Post-Civil War Book Everyone Is Reading

Jonathan Martin: “If nothing else, the age of Trump has made abundantly clear that the post-World War II political consensus in America is over. With elections more an outgrowth of identity than a reflection of preference, the country has returned to a post-Civil War politics, when, as the saying went, people ‘vote as they shot’ in the years after the war.”

“I’ve been thinking about that period for two years, since reading Jon Grinspan’s book, The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought To Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915. Grinspan, a historian at the Smithsonian, details another period of technological disruption, high immigration rates and, yes, close presidential races with soaring turnout and anger that metastasized into violence. And he also writes about how it ended after the turn of the century, chronicling the reformers who sanitized politics into what it was until the first decades of this century.”

“It turns out I’m not the only one who has turned to the past to better grasp the present. Grinspan’s book has quietly become something of a cult favorite with lawmakers also eager to understand this new, convulsive era of politics — and what can be done to tame it.”