"All Four of the Narratives I've Described Emerged from America's Failure to Sustain and Enlarge the Middle-Class Democracy of the Postwar Years"

"All four narratives are also driven by a competition for status that generates fierce anxiety and resentment. They all anoint winners and losers. In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating."

The Atlantic runs an excerpt from George Packer's Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal.

And in the Los Angeles Times, Jackie Calmes finds "a straight line from Gingrich's uncompromising, smash-mouth politics to the tea party and then to Trump."