When the Clock Broke
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  • Published: 16 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405981699
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $30.00

When the Clock Broke

Con Men, Conspiracists and the Origins of Trumpism

Formats & editions
Paperback
16 Sep 2025
EBook
12 Jun 2025
Audiobook
27 Feb 2025
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A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A BARACK OBAMA SUMMER PICK

A rollicking, revelatory look at the tumult of the early 1990s and the rise of a new, more berserk America that birthed the Donald Trump Era

‘When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump’s ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly’ Washington Post

‘A fascinating, provocative challenge to our age – passionate, unexpected, illuminating’ Rory Stewart

With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated and US power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a ‘kinder, gentler America’. It didn’t work out that way. Instead, it was a period of punishing economic hardship, rising anger and domestic strife, setting the tone for the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.

In this original and often hilarious book, John Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new kind of paranoid politics: how a group of con men and conspiracists declared a culture war on liberal elites, rejected ‘globalism’ and called for a ‘populist based
presidency’. Trumpism was struggling to be born.

A rollicking exposé of the end of the post-World War II order, this book shows the advent of a new, more berserk America.

‘Terrific . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core’ New York Times

One of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Books of 2024
One of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2024
  • Published: 16 September 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405981699
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $30.00
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Praise for When the Clock Broke

A terrific new book . . . Vibrant . . . Ganz has the skills of a gifted storyteller - one with excellent comedic timing, too - slipping in the most absurd and telling details . . . Urgent and illuminating . . . When the Clock Broke is one of those rarest of books: unflaggingly entertaining while never losing sight of its moral core

Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

When the Clock Broke is leagues more insightful on the subject of Trump's ascent than most writing that purports to address the issue directly

Becca Rothfield, Washington Post

John Ganz is a fantastic writer . . . When the Clock Broke is phenomenal . . . truly, truly great

Chris Hayes, Why Is This Happening? Podcast

Lively and kaleidoscopic

Andrew Marantz, New Yorker

Masterly . . . Ganz spotlights the rage and rancour that spread beneath the surface of American life in a period now remembered for its peace and prosperity

Kyle Burke, Times Literary Supplement

A great book

Michelle Goldberg, New York Times

We should . . . pay greater heed to the ghosts of battles lost. That is the premise--and brilliant insight--of John Ganz's When the Clock Broke . . . Among its virtues, the greatest value of Ganz's book is that it delivers history in its richest context

Edward Luce, Financial Times

Superb . . . When the Clock Broke offers a compelling examination of a neglected and revealing period in American history . . . It is also one of the most entertaining history books I have read in years. Ganz has a novelist's skill at managing character, pacing, and plot, as well as a great eye for details that are telling, bizarre, and hilarious

Daniel Geary, Irish Times

A fascinating shadow story of the 1990s

Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show

In When the Clock Broke, John Ganz offers a continuously absorbing and bracing genealogy of today’s incontinent far-right. A must-read for those wondering why the collapse of communism did not bring about the end of the history, and instead inaugurated the apotheosis of fanatics in the free world

Pankaj Mishra

A brilliant, biting account of how the dream of a "kinder, gentler America" curdled into the chaos we live with today

Eliot Higgins

A fascinating, provocative challenge to our age – passionate, unexpected, illuminating

Rory Stewart

Clear and convincing . . . A spry and superbly written book on 1990s American politics . . . the best account I have ever read on the origins of Trumpism . . . brilliant

Tomiwa Owolade, Daily Telegraph