Larry Sabato's Reading List

"Betrayal broke a lot of news but the reason I chose it is because it makes all the points that people need to know about what Karl calls “the final act of The Trump Show” and it is very well written. Karl covered Trump from day one of his presidency and he knew all the central actors in Trump’s world. His previous book, Front Row at the Trump Show , gave great insights into the administration. This picks up where his last book left off. I’m very concerned about that. We live in a society with an attention span of a tsetse fly. We move from topic to topic, not just by the day but by the hour. The media deserve a share of blame, but they are responding to what we want. They follow our eyeballs. So I am very concerned that people will not understand the importance and implications of what happened on January 6th even though it affects all of us and it affects the future of the American Republic. Benjamin Franklin was right. We have a republic if we can keep it. And I’m not sure we can."

"Inevitably, a book by a central Democratic party figure like Adam Schiff is tinged with partisanship. So, why did I include it without including a Republican book? Because while I strive to be balanced about politics , I’m not balanced about democracy. I am pro-democracy. I want a republic and I want to make common cause with everyone who does. Schiff shows why we all must be concerned about what is happening. Perhaps it’s a partisan trumpet, but we all need a wake-up call. Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Bush Republicans should be as outraged as anybody else about the way the Trump Administration tried to derail our democracy. Schiff makes the case that we should all come together to shore up our republic. Schiff was in the weeds of both impeachment inquiries. He underscores that what occurred was not normal. It was not ‘politics as usual.’ His message is in his subtitle: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could."

"This book looks at how democracies all over the world rose and fell, and what caused them to fall. Americans had an almost arrogant attitude that the collapse of democracy couldn’t happen here. Then it started happening here. And it’s still going on. Almost everybody on the Republican side repeats ‘the big lie’—that Donald Trump won the 2020 election—as though it’s true. Levitsky and Ziblatt show us the symptoms to look out for and suggest how to restore health to democracies. It’s widespread. It’s not just Trump, it’s the Congress and the Supreme Court . Trump, who lost the popular vote when he won the presidency in 2016, made three appointments to the Supreme Court, his appointees are a full third of the Supreme Court. We are seeing the impact of those appointments in recent extreme Supreme Court rulings involving issues like abortion. In Congress, even mainstream Republicans remain silent or parrot Trump’s ‘big lie.’ Although they admit it’s false off-camera and they know that Biden was fairly elected with a popular vote and electoral college majority, they’re too afraid of Trump and his followers to speak the truth. Right there, is the beginning of the unraveling of the American republic. When people are afraid to speak the truth, the decay of democracy is well underway."

"Applebaum demonstrates that the trend against democracy is worldwide and difficult to reverse. And Applebaum outlines the reason why human beings all across the world have moved toward authoritarianism in troubled times. Authoritarians promise easy and absolute solutions. They say they will make the trains run on time then insist the clocks are lying when they’re late. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount ."

"This is a book you can’t put down. Bob Woodward has been revealing what happens behind closed doors in Washington since Watergate. Woodward has the long perspective of watching the American system since the seventies and Robert Costa is a wonderful reporter. The two of them take us through the last days of the Trump Administration. What they report is shocking and their reporting remains unchallenged. Once you start reading this, you have to finish it. This came out when Biden was still popular—before Delta and Omicron and Afghanistan and inflation brought Biden down. I don’t think there is much Biden could do to save our system. Change must come from the states, who control elections. We’re not going to have another Constitutional Convention. And nothing could get out of Congress. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Here’s what’s doable: our media organizations and informed citizens can fight the false information that continues to rot our republic. Democracy depends on a shared understanding of basic truths. I don’t have much hope that we’re going to see change coming out of the states or from Congress. Democrats control both houses very narrowly and midterm elections almost never favor the party in power. So, it’s up to us. We must change the formula of this democracy, which too often now is depending on disinformation. Social media companies have got to do far better. A republic depends on its citizens. We must get more active and more educated."