An eye-opening new history of American political conflict, from Alexander Hamilton to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In recent years, fear for the fate of American democracy has become widespread and intense. The Trump presidency and the failure of many of its supporters to accept the 2020 election result pose a unique threat to the country’s foundational creed. But American democracy is not an achieved system that has now suddenly come under threat—it’s better understood as a long, unfinished conversation about how “we the people” can rule. For some, the gulf between political elites and the people is so wide that democracy itself is simply a myth. For others, the story of American democracy is the steady expansion of political rights, as the country’s founding ideals come to be realized—at least until now.

In The Realigners, the historian Timothy Shenk offers an entertaining and provocative reassessment of the American political tradition, stressing strife among elites and the volatile mixes and remixes of the democratic idea that define our history. In the eighteenth century, the United States was founded as a republic ruled by propertied elites. In the nineteenth century, the expansion of the franchise and advent of mass political parties established a raucous democracy, at least among white males. In the twentieth century, the expansion of rights coincided with democracy’s evolution into technocracy, where experts administered a massive state, and liberals and conservatives argued over whose experts would wield power. Today, the limits of both the bureaucratic and the corporate political visions are clear—and radical voices from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to MAGA-minded nationalists search for new conceptions of what self-governance can mean.

With fresh insight and entertaining detail, Shenk offers an eye-opening new biography of the American political tradition. The result is a vital work of political history, rendering present-day strife intelligible as never before.