The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America

In recent years American politics has seemingly become much more partisan, more zero-sum, more vicious, and less able to confront the real problems our nation faces. What has happened?

In The Second Civil War, respected political commentator Ronald Brownstein diagnoses the electoral, demographic, and institutional forces that have wreaked such change over the American political landscape, pulling politics into the margins and leaving precious little common ground for compromise. The Second Civil War is not a book for Democrats or Republicans but for all Americans who are disturbed by our current political dysfunction and hungry for ways to understand it—and move beyond it.

Ronald Brownstein is political director of Atlantic Media, publishers of the Atlantic, National Journal, and the Hotline, among other publications. He was national political correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of both the 1996 and 2004 presidential elections. The author or editor of five previous books, he appears regularly as an analyst for CNN and other television programs, such as Meet the Press and Charlie Rose.