Crossing the Rubicon: The Betrayal of American Democracy, 2000-2026 by Danner, Mark

Essays on fascism, the war on terror, Abu Ghraib, Dick Cheney, the Iraq War, the Bush-Gore and Trump elections, and many other subjects from one of America's foremost political thinkers. These provocative pieces have been gathered from the early 2000s to the present and chronicle America's slide away from democracy to a new era of barbarism.

Mark Danner, one of our most astute political journalists, has worked ceaselessly for the past quarter of a century to report on the state of American politics. Crossing the Rubicon collects Danner's best essays, which depict with uncanny prescience the erosion of democratic institutions and the inexorable rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. From the Bush-Gore election to the War on Terror and torture at Abu Ghraib to the election of Donald Trump, Danner traces just how we came to be where we are today in this increasingly polarized and partisan world. Included in this collection are finely detailed portraits of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the masterminds behind the Iraq War, as well as searing critiques of mass media's outsized role in politics. Together, these timely and provocative essays provide an overview of the decline and fall of liberal America, as well as the advent of a new and disturbing barbarism.

Author: Mark Danner
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 11/10/2026
Pages: 424
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 1.20d
ISBN: 9798896230892

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 10/15/2026

About the Author
Mark Danner has been writing about foreign wars and American
politics for more than three decades. Among his books are The Massacre
at El Mozote, Stripping Bare the Body, and Spiral: Trapped in
the Forever War. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for many
years and is a longtime contributor to The New York Review of Books.
His work has received many honors, including a National Magazine
Award, three Overseas Press Awards, a Guggenheim, an Emmy, and
a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently Class of 1961 Distinguished
Chair in Undergraduate Education at the University of California
at Berkeley.