Realigners, Timothy Shenk
Realigners, Timothy Shenk
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Realigners
Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries, and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy

Author: Timothy Shenk

Narrator: Suehyla El-Attar, Timothy Shenk

Unabridged: 13 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/18/2022

Synopsis

Introduction read by the author.

An eye-opening new history of American political conflict, from Alexander Hamilton to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

These days it seems that nobody is satisfied with American democracy. Critics across the ideological spectrum warn that the country is heading toward catastrophe but also complain that nothing seems to change. At the same time, many have begun to wonder if the gulf between elites and ordinary people has turned democracy itself into a myth. The urge to defend the country’s foundations and to dismantle them coexist—often within the same people. How did we get here? Why does it feel like the country is both grinding to a halt and falling to pieces?

In Realigners, the historian Timothy Shenk offers an eye-opening new biography of the American political tradition. In a history that runs from the drafting of the Constitution to the storming of the Capitol, Shenk offers sharp pen portraits of signal characters from James Madison and Charles Sumner to Phyllis Schlafly and Barack Obama. The result is an entertaining and provocative reassessment of the people who built the electoral coalitions that defined American democracy—and a guide for a time when figures ranging from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to MAGA-minded nationalists seek to turn radical dreams into political realities.

In an era when it seems democracy is caught in perpetual crisis, Realigners looks at earlier moments when popular majorities transformed American life. We’ve had those moments before. And if there’s an escape from the doom loop that American politics has become, it’s because we might have one again.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

About Timothy Shenk

Timothy Shenk is an assistant professor of history at George Washington University. The coeditor of Dissent magazine, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, and Jacobin, among other publications. He has been a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the New America Foundation. He lives outside Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Corey on June 16, 2024

With Realigners, Shenk has crafted a compelling arc of mini-biographies on some of America’s most important political actors—the men and women who worked to build majority coalitions and bring about a new eras in politics. It’s a breezy, eminently readable 350 pages of sweeping history, but the abbr......more

Goodreads review by Amanda on November 29, 2022

I was expecting some analysis, some why and how. Instead, I got a book report. A fine book report, but a book report none the less.......more

Goodreads review by Brett on December 24, 2023

Mid-way review: I took Prof. Shenk's history class at GW, ostensibly about the same topic that this book covers. I enjoyed the class, and thought the idea of studying American politics through the lens of ever-changing political coalitions was a unique way to understand our history and current polit......more

Goodreads review by Brenden on December 28, 2023

In the twilight of Biden's first term, it feels fairly evident that the dream of the Bernie Sanders 2016 and 2020 primary campaigns was a failure. We can describe it as a noble failure. We can tick off the gains that the left has made, but the bid to unite working-class BIPOC, working-class whites,......more

Goodreads review by Luke on March 19, 2025

So freaking good! This is a super engaging, accessible, and thorough political history of our country. Shenl tracks dominant American political coalitions from the ratification and early republican era to modern day. The most meaningful section to me was on Charles Sumner, who helped found the Repub......more

Quotes

"[Realigners] is fair in its criticisms, vividly written, impressively researched, and—best of all—delightfully out of step with present-day liberal orthodoxy . . . Highly readable." —Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal

"Shenk offers a valuable framework for analyzing American politics . . . An astute and stylish history that speaks to present-day concerns over partisan polarization.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is an exhilarating book. Shenk sees clearly that democracy can change the world, but that most attempts end in tragedy rather than victory. From James Madison through W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter Lippmann, to Phyllis Schlafly and Barack Obama, his characters stand at this political fault line. Every chapter shines with insight, arresting detail, and vivid judgment. This is a work of political history worthy of a novelist, and a work of political realism that—just—shows how to keep democratic hope alive.” —Jedediah Purdy, professor of law at Columbia University and author of Two Cheers for Politics, This Land is Our Land, and other books

"Realigners announces the emergence of a bold, deeply informed, and highly original new voice in the world of American politics and its history, with special attention to the relationship between political elites and the broader public. Its closest antecedent is Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition, and like that iconic work it is beautifully written and argued, and filled with insights that will inform both specialists and a broader public that wants to know the origins of our current democratic dilemmas." —Eric Foner, professor of history emeritus at Columba University and author of The Story of American Freedom and other books

"Timothy Shenk’s Realigners bristles with historical insight useful at this moment of extraordinary peril for American democracy." —Randall Kennedy, professor at Harvard Law School and author of Say It Loud!

"For better or worse, Americans who want to transform their country have always needed to do the hard work of building coalitions and majorities. Tim Shenk's terrific history shows how to do that—and how to be an idealist at the same time. Today's activists and strategists have much to learn from earlier efforts, whether failures, successes, or the many bold historical experiments that fell somewhere in between. If you care about the past, present, or future of democracy, read this book." —Beverly Gage, professor of history at Yale University and author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century

"Combining gripping narratives of political lives with structural insights into the longstanding impediments to democracy, Realigners is a sweeping exploration of how transformative coalitions in the U.S. have been built and lost. Beautifully written and filled with essential insights, it should be read and debated by anyone concerned with the state of American politics." —Aziz Rana, author of The Two Faces of American Freedom

"Realigners is an untimely book, in the best sense. In defiance of fashionable bottom-up social history, Timothy Shenk shows the centrality of leaders in American history, outsiders and insiders alike. In an age of gargantuan biographies, Shenk is a virtuoso of the miniature portrait and the significant vignette. And in an era of polarization and partisanship, Shenk shows that is possible to combine political engagement with respect for those who disagree." —Michael Lind, author of The New Class War

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