On a long list of distinguished books by James A. Morone, Republic of Wrath: How American Politics Turned Tribal, from George Washington to Donald Trump may be read as the third in a trilogy (the antecedents are The Democratic Wish and Hellfire Nation) that are, individually and ensemble, among the finest accounts of the politics of US public policy ever written. Republic of Wrath makes three particularly impressive contributions. First, it examines the nation's political history “with an eye to the people on the margins of power” (339), paying special attention to African Americans, immigrants, and women, and it adds to the march of historical events fresh accent marks on patterns that recur from the first days of the republic straight down to Donald Trump. Along the way Morone pierces the saccharin rhetoric of both the Right (we are, and have always been, one nation under God, with liberty...

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