Last Ordinary Year: The Election That Broke America

Nobody woke up on January 1, 1860, and knew what was coming. What followed was not a single dramatic rupture but fifty-two weeks of ordinary-seeming decisions, each one making the next, more extreme decision look a little more reasonable than it would have looked in isolation.This week-by-week narrative traces the year America's political system worked exactly as designed and produced a result a l...