Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
Sarah Kendzior
(Author)
Description
Instant New York Times Bestseller
Washington Post Bestseller
USA Today Bestseller
Indie Bound Bestseller
Authors Round the South Bestseller
Midwest Indie Bestseller
The story of Donald Trump's rise to power is the story of a buried American history - buried because people in power liked it that way. It was visible without being seen, influential without being named, ubiquitous without being overt. Sarah Kendzior's Hiding in Plain Sight pulls back the veil on a history spanning decades, a history of an American autocrat in the making. In doing so, she reveals the inherent fragility of American democracy - how our continual loss of freedom, the rise of consolidated corruption, and the secrets behind a burgeoning autocratic United States have been hiding in plain sight for decades. In Kendzior's signature and celebrated style, she expertly outlines Trump's meteoric rise from the 1980s until today, interlinking key moments of his life with the degradation of the American political system and the continual erosion of our civil liberties by foreign powers. Kendzior also offers a never-before-seen look at her lifelong tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - living in New York through 9/11 and in St. Louis during the Ferguson uprising, and researching media and authoritarianism when Trump emerged using the same tactics as the post-Soviet dictatorships she had long studied. It is a terrible feeling to sense a threat coming, but it is worse when we let apathy, doubt, and fear prevent us from preparing ourselves. Hiding in Plain Sight confronts the injustice we have too long ignored because the truth is the only way forward.
Product Details
Price
$27.99
$26.03
Publisher
Flatiron Books
Publish Date
April 07, 2020
Pages
288
Dimensions
6.3 X 9.5 X 1.0 inches | 1.0 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781250210715
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Sarah Kendzior is best known for her reporting on St. Louis and the 2016 election, her academic research on authoritarian states, and her New York Times bestselling debut The View from Flyover Country. She is a co-host of the podcast Gaslit Nation and was named one of Foreign Policy's "100 people you should be following on Twitter to make sense of global events." Her reporting has been featured in Politico, The Atlantic, Fast Company, The New York Times, Globe and Mail, and more. She lives in St. Louis.
Reviews
"It's brilliant and also terrifying. You can't look away."
--Alex George, author of The Paris Hours
--Library Journal Review Hiding in Plain Sight isn't just about Trump, but about how crumbling democracies intent on rolling back the freedoms of its citizens create perfect conditions for the rise of dangerous autocrats.
--Bitch Magazine, 2020 Nonfiction Preview Impeccably researched...This comprehensive, page-turning account presents a stark and uncompromising indictment of the Trump presidency as the culmination of a 'decades-long erosion of American stability, integrity, and democracy. --Publishers Weekly A scathing indictment of Donald Trump...Kendzior offers fresh views based on her experiences living in the declining economy of the Midwest and on observations as an academic researcher studying dictatorships in the former Soviet Union..... A passionate call for immediate action against the 'transnational crime syndicate' that has supplanted the U.S. government. --Kirkus Her highly readable and well-documented new narrative explains the development of an elite criminal network in America, how digital media has shaped repression and protest, and how globalization has allowed the proliferation of organized crime.
--National Review of Books
An elegantly written, unforgiving, trenchant bit of political analysis.
--Inside HigherEd Sarah Kendzior's Hiding in Plain Sight should be required reading prior to the 2020 election. It shows the decline of American politics into the corruption that inhabits the Oval Office today.... By giving us a clear eyed view of what we're up against, Sarah Kendzior has given us cause to continue the fight.
--PrimmLife Praise for The View from Flyover Country A New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book of the Year 2018
Both prescient and honest...seeing the roots of the arguments that now dominate cable news is both fascinating and a little bit haunting in retrospect. --NPR Kendzior's prose is sharp and consistent whether the essay is data dense or an opinion piece. She maneuvers through big issues with a pace and clarity that makes unpalatable topics fascinating, and unfortunately, relatable. -- Hyperallergic "The defining journalistic account of Trump's America does complain, but it isn't best-selling gossip fodder like Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury or James Comey's A Higher Loyalty. It's the book from the Midwestern journalist who barely mentions the president's name."
--Record-Eagle Sharply written pieces about life and inequality in middle America.
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 85 Books for Summer Reading An academic, Midwesterner and firebrand, Kendzior crafts work that looks unflinchingly at what ails the country. --Shelf Awareness, starred review It's a call to arms, highlighting the struggles of disenfranchised, overworked, and underpaid Americans, and urging our elected officials to recognize and address the inequalities that have become even more pronounced since when she originally wrote the essays. --The Village Voice The View From Flyover Country is well worth reading....Here is a thoughtful critic who knows how to sound the alarm. --The Arts Fuse Kendzior's essays bring to light social injustice and economic inequality in Middle America from a voice that lives there. --Medium "The talented Kendzior...writes intelligently and with great empathy about problems faced by the Midwest." --New York Post "Kendzior's writing, while often concise and clever like this, is just as often backed by statistics, attributions or an illustrative profile...Though her message is alarming, it is softened with compassion." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "An astonishment and a challenge to convention for all sorts of reasons...[One of the] books devoted to where we really were not very long ago, where we are now and where we might well be going. They don't mess around. They play rough. But then the truth almost always does." --Buffalo News From Russia to flyover country, Sarah Kendzior might be the voice we need. -- Columbia Journalism Review Hers is a crystalline voice of reason and appraisal in a world that shifts further into unrecognizable territory minute-by-minute. -- Carol Haggas, Booklist A collection of sharp-edged, humanistic pieces about the American heartland...Passionate pieces that repeatedly assail the inability of many to empathize and to humanize. -- Kirkus "Authoritarianism does not happen in a vacuum. Kendzior gives us valuable information about conditions in the forgotten parts of our country, which provided fertile ground for the rise of Trump." --AMY SISKIND, AUTHOR OF THE LIST "Urgent and beautifully expressed . . . What makes Kendzior's writing so truly important [is that] it documents where the problem lies, by somebody who lives there. Read her." --THE WIRE "Kendzior is no psychic. She's just whip-smart and an expert on authoritarian governments. She's also that rare writer with an analyst's brain and an empath's heart... Though the essays are topical and political...one senses they'll stand the test of time, just for the beauty of the prose and the soundness of the philosophy." --STEFENE RUSSELL, ST. LOUIS MAGAZINE
