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America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: It’s working exactly as designed. In this book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us — and how we are polarizing it — with disastrous results.

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“Superbly researched and written . . . An overall outstanding volume.”

—Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post

“Brilliant and wide-ranging. . . Absolutely crucial for understanding this perilous moment.”

—Chris Hayes

“The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.”

In this book, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.

America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.

The Why We’re Polarized Book Tour

NEW YORK CITY
Thursday, January 30 • 7:30 PM
92nd Street Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall
In conversation with Malcolm Gladwell

Details

BOSTON
Friday, January 31 • 7:30 PM
Back Bay Center
In Conversation with Lawrence Lessig

Details

BROOKLYN
Sunday, February 2 • 4:30 PM
Greenlight Bookstore @ St. Josephs College
In conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates

Details

LOS ANGELES
Tuesday, February 4 • 8:00 PM
Live Talks LA @ The Aratani Theater
In Conversation with Shani Hilton

Details

SAN FRANCISCO
Thursday, February 6 • 6:30 PM
The Commonwealth Club
In conversation with Anna Sale

Details

SEATTLE
Monday, February 10 • 7:00 PM
University Bookstore @
University Temple Methodist Church
In Conversation with Zaki Hamid

Details

PORTLAND, OR
Wednesday, February 12 • 7:00 PM
Powell's @ Cedar Hills Crossing
In Conversation with Omar El Akkad

Details

SAN FRANCISCO
Thursday, February 13 • 6:30 PM
ScribdChats @ Scribd HQ
In conversation with Dave Eggers

Details

SAN FRANCISCO
Thursday, February 20 • 6:30 PM
Manny’s

Details

Austin, TX
March 13-15 • Details TBA
SXSW

Chicago, IL
Monday, April 13 • 5:30 PM
University of Chicago, Institute of Politics

Greenville, SC
Tuesday, April 14 • 7:00 PM
Furman University

Nashville, TN
Wednesday, April 15 • 6:30 PM
Vanderbilt University

Ezra Klein is the editor-at-large and cofounder of Vox, the award-winning explanatory news organization. Launched in 2014, Vox reaches more than fifty million people across its platforms each month. Klein is also the host of the podcast the Ezra Klein Show, cohost of the Weeds podcast, and an executive producer on Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. Previously, Klein was a columnist and editor at the Washington Post, a policy analyst at MSNBC, and a contributor to Bloomberg. He’s written for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and appeared on many programs including Face the Nation, the Daily Show, and PBS NewsHour.

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