David Garrow is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Luther King Jr. biography Bearing the Cross and Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. He has also become my favorite reviewer in the weekend Beacon’s rotation.
Today Professor Garrow reviews the new book by the reporter President Trump calls “my Salena.” His Salena’s new book is Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland, to be published on Tuesday. Professor Garrow’s review is “Trump in the Crosshairs.” He concludes:
Almost half a century ago now I can remember my 23-year-old’s excitement at meeting storied reporters Johnny Apple and David Broder, much like encountering once-famous baseball players like Frank Howard and Minnie Minoso. Nowadays, without question, Zito stands in the same league with a Broder or a Dan Balz, for no other journalist has done a better job of reporting and explaining the rise of “the conservative populist coalition.”
As Butler so impressively recounts, “the voters’ values haven’t changed, but the parties have,” and the result is a partisan realignment that may linger for years to come. “Republicans are now the party of working-class Americans, and Democrats are the party of the elites.”
Whole thing here.
