
When the Clock Broke
Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
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Narrated by:
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Eric Jason Martin
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By:
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John Ganz
About this listen
National Book Critics Circle Award nominee, 2024
Long-listed, Boston Globe Best Books of the Year, 2024
Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year
New York Times Book Review Notable Books of the Year, 2024
"John Ganz is the most important young political writer of his generation—just the one our dark moment needs."—Rick Perlstein
"Lively and kaleidoscopic."—Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker
"John Ganz belongs to a species of public intellectual that is almost extinct . . . When the Clock Broke is the first of what I hope will be a shelf of books that help us uncover the true history of our times."—Jeet Heer
A lively, revelatory look back at the convulsions at the end of the Reagan era—and their dark legacy today.
With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today.
In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents. Ranging from upheavals in Crown Heights and Los Angeles to the advent of David Duke and the heartland survivalists, the broadcasts of Rush Limbaugh, and the bitter disputes between neoconservatives and the “paleo-con” right, Ganz immerses us in a time when what Philip Roth called the “indigenous American berserk” took new and ever-wilder forms. In the 1992 campaign, Pat Buchanan's and Ross Perot’s insurgent populist bids upended the political establishment, all while Americans struggled through recession, alarm about racial and social change, the specter of a new power in Asia, and the end of Cold War–era political norms. Conspiracy theories surged, and intellectuals and activists strove to understand the “Middle American Radicals” whose alienation fueled new causes. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton appeared to forge a new, vital center, though it would not hold for long.
In a rollicking, eye-opening book, Ganz narrates the fall of the Reagan order and the rise of a new and more turbulent America.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
©2024 John Ganz (P)2024 Macmillan AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Lucid and propulsive . . . [When the Clock Broke is] woven throughout with astute analysis of the period’s political commentary . . . Ganz's dry with is ever-present . . . This is a revelation."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"With his combination of immense erudition, independence of mind, clarity of expression, and honesty in reckoning with the terrifying weight of history, John Ganz belongs to a species of public intellectual that is almost extinct. To place him in his proper category, you have to rope in James Baldwin, Garry Wills, and Joan Didion. When the Clock Broke is the first of what I hope will be a shelf of books that help us uncover the true history of our times."—Jeet Heer, national affairs correspondent for The Nation
"When the Clock Broke locates the origins of our strange political age in the crack-up of conventional wisdom at the end of the Reagan era and the Cold War. Ganz's clock sounds the alarm on some of the most ominous and entrenched aspects of the American political condition. Unlike many observers these days, he also finds absurdity and humor in our national pageant. Sometimes we need to laugh as well as cry—Ganz's book helps us do both."—Beverly Gage, Gaddis Professor of History at Yale University and author of G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century
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- Narrated by: Patrick Stevens
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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I have discovered a group of women who refuse to be exploited, are immune to manipulation, and who never settle in the name of love. These ladies know what they want and take what they want by beating men at their own game. Utilizing the secrets exposed in this book, these women gain power, money, and status. Men call them gold diggers, women call them hos, but they call themselves winners. This is the book that society doesn't want you to listen to….
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I spent $24,000 in 4 months
- By B.M. on 10-06-18
By: G. L. Lambert
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Medieval Myths & Mysteries
- By: Dorsey Armstrong, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Dorsey Armstrong
- Length: 5 hrs and 6 mins
- Original Recording
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The 10 enlightening (and often humorous) lectures of Medieval Myths and Mysteries will show you how far from the “dark” times of legend these centuries were. Uncover the facts about the Knights Templar. Reveal the truth behind the tales of legendary creatures like the Questing Beast and the unicorn. Trace the events of the Black Death and the ways it altered the world in its wake, and much more. With Professor Armstrong, you will dig deep into the ways that later generations reshaped the narrative of the medieval years and perpetuated the myths.
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Interesting, but centered on Britain
- By Ximena on 04-10-20
By: Dorsey Armstrong, and others
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The Man Who Killed Kennedy
- The Case Against LBJ
- By: Roger Stone
- Narrated by: David Rapkin
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Lyndon Baines Johnson was a man of great ambition and enormous greed, both of which, in 1963, would threaten to destroy him. In the end, President Johnson would use power from his personal connections in Texas and from the underworld and from the government to escape an untimely end in politics and to seize even greater power. President Johnson, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, was the driving force behind a conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. In The Man Who Killed Kennedy, you will find out how and why he did it. Political consultant, strategist, and Libertarian Roger Stone has gathered documents and used his firsthand knowledge to construct the ultimate tome to prove that LBJ was not only involved in JFK's assassination, but was in fact the mastermind. With 2013 being the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's assassination, this is the perfect time for The Man Who Killed Kennedy to be available to readers. The research and information in this book is unprecedented, and as Roger Stone lived through it, he's the perfect person to bring it to everyone's attention.
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COMPELLING BOOK - THE CROOKS ARE IN POWER
- By Theo Tsourdalakis on 12-01-13
By: Roger Stone
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My Big TOE: Awakening
- Book One of a Trilogy Unifying Philosophy, Physics, and Metaphysics
- By: Thomas Campbell
- Narrated by: Thomas Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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My Big TOE: Awakening, written by a nuclear physicist in the language of contemporary culture, unifies science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal. The entirety of human experience (mind, body, and spirit) including both our objective and subjective worlds is brought together under one seamless scientific understanding.
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What a Trip (but to where?)
- By Michael on 11-26-13
By: Thomas Campbell
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Mythology: Mega Collection
- Classic Stories from the Greek, Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Hindu, Chinese, Mesopotamian and Egyptian Mythology
- By: Scott Lewis
- Narrated by: Madison Niederhauser, Oliver Hunt
- Length: 31 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Do you know how many wives Zeus had? Or how the famous Trojan War was caused by one beautiful lady? Or how Thor got his hammer? Give your imagination a real treat. This Mega Mythology Collection of eight audiobooks is for you....
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An interesting set of introductions.
- By Kevin Potter on 05-30-19
By: Scott Lewis
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Caffeine
- How Caffeine Created the Modern World
- By: Michael Pollan
- Narrated by: Michael Pollan
- Length: 2 hrs and 2 mins
- Original Recording
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Michael Pollan, known for his best-selling nonfiction audio, including The Omnivores Dilemma and How to Change Your Mind, conceived and wrote Caffeine: How Caffeine Created the Modern World as an Audible Original. In this controversial and exciting listen, Pollan explores caffeine’s power as the most-used drug in the world - and the only one we give to children (in soda pop) as a treat.
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Leaves much to be desired
- By Melody H on 02-02-20
By: Michael Pollan
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The Complete Book of Five Rings
- By: Miyamoto Musashi, Kenji Tokitsu - editor/translator
- Narrated by: Brian Nishii
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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The Complete Book of Five Rings is an authoritative version of Musashi's classic The Book of Five Rings, translated and annotated by a modern martial arts master, Kenji Tokitsu. Tokitsu has spent most of his life researching the legendary samurai swordsman and his works, and in this book he illuminates this seminal text, along with several other works by Musashi.
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Best translation I have encountered.
- By DW on 05-27-16
By: Miyamoto Musashi, and others
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On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides’ bravura account of Cook’s last journey both wrestles with Cook’s legacy and provides a thrilling narrative of the titanic efforts and continual danger that characterized exploration.
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Detailed story of third voyage
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A bold new history of modern conservatism that finds its origins in the populist right-wing politics of the 1990s.
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Great history of the fringe elements of the Republican party that led to Donald Trump!
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For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.
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A Great Disorder is a bold, urgent work that helps us make sense of today's culture wars through a brilliant reconsideration of America's foundational myths and their use in contemporary politics. Richard Slotkin identifies five myths, born of different eras, that have shaped our conception of what it means to be American: the myths of the Frontier, the Founding, the Civil War (which he breaks into two opposing camps, Emancipation and the Lost Cause), and the Good War, embodied by the multiethnic platoon fighting for freedom.
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Opinion masquerading as history
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In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. “Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves,” they envision each other as artistic collaborators and embark on a future defined by freedom and creativity. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier.
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Maybe it's the narrator, but I could not continue
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The Hidden Globe
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A globe shows the world we think we know: neatly delineated sovereign nations that grant or restrict their citizens’ rights. Beneath, above, and tucked inside their borders, however, another universe has been engineered into existence. It consists of thousands of extraterritorial zones that operate largely autonomously, and increasingly for the benefit of the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Atossa Abrahamian traces the rise of this hidden globe to thirteenth-century Switzerland, where poor cantons marketed their only commodity.
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why a male narrator?
- By catriona on 12-27-24
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V13
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A moving, hard-hitting account of the Paris attacks trial by France’s leading nonfiction writer.
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Insightful
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What listeners say about When the Clock Broke
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- Aaron R. Isaacson
- 06-25-24
Amazing history of the early 90s
This is an important history of the early 1990s. For those of us millennials who remember that time period but were too young to have been engaged with the issues in a meaningful way (I was in elementary school during the relevant time period), this is a great resource. The author showed where many of the trends that we are encountering in 21st-century politics originated. I think this is an important primer to understand culture and politics in America. This is also a highly engaging and entertaining book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kelsey Hupp
- 08-11-24
Brilliant
We should listen more to historians and less to politicians and opinion talking heads… Get this book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Sustainability Man
- 08-30-24
The best book about Trumpism to date barely even mentions Donald
An absolutely brilliant book painstakingly tracing a whole tapestry of threads in the early nineties that constituted early symptoms of the cancer of MAGA fascism with which the American body politic has been afflicted since 2016. Many of the connections are so subtly drawn that a reader/listener who has not paid close attention to the horrors of the Trump years may miss some of them, but it is food for thought for all.
There’s David Duke’s mainstreaming of Nazism, John Gotti making NY gangsterism fashionable, right wing police thuggery in LA and NY, Ross Perot building a populist movement on the basis of POW-MIA conspiracy theories and a billionaire’s cash, and more. Honestly the best book on the MAGA phenomenon yet, with its creatively assembled mosaic of the movement’s prehistory. Should be a model for studies of contemporary American politics moving forward.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Nicholas Adams
- 09-03-24
Either an exercise in trust of the reader or bathetic petering out
Covers its subject very well until it doesn’t. The last chapter leaves dangling threads of extremism and semi-fascist figures, culminating in a brief, telling remark by a pre-politician Trump. There is no attempt to wrap-up or offer a comprehensive theory of the case. Ganz ends his book in the same tone and from the same narrative height at which he spends most of it. There is a great deal of factual information that is useful to understanding contemporary figures, but the book rarely transcends journalism. This is not necessarily a slight, but in his other writings, Ganz frequently tilts towards ideological history and big patterns. In this book—as my review title gestures at—he leaves it to the reader to infer the major thesis. Or perhaps the desired summation is contained in the introduction, but after 14 hours of listening, the reader understandably perhaps desires a restatement.
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- Michael Lawson
- 08-19-24
Provides a bridge from Prequel (or Ultra podcast) by Rachel Maddow to the present day
Listen to Heather Cox Richardson about the Civil War and Reconstruction and then Rachel Maddow’s Ultra podcast. Or readRachel‘s book Prequel. Then listen to this book. How we got to where we are with the extremist right won’t be a mystery anymore.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-02-24
The voice of the reader!
There was nothing I disliked about this book . It was a joy to listen to and I was disappointed when it came to a conclusion!
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- Denise R Halverson
- 08-31-24
How we got here
Looking back is critical to moving forward. A great, yet frightening listen. Living it but not realizing the underpinnings of what was happening. Highly recommend this title.
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- Amazon Customer
- 10-07-24
A strong narrative of 1992
Good:
- Strong chaptering with concise prose
- Good reference material and summarization of economic, cultural and political concepts.
-Handles modern connections in a mature, understated mode that doesn't hit you over the head with the foregone conclusion of some of the subjects.
- Fascinating dive into the minds of the dark political theorists who lost the 90s ultimately but served as intellectual godfathers of the Bush and Trump eras.
- Just a great review of the Godfather Trilogy and Goodfellas vis a vie the theme of American fascism.
Bad:
- Gets unwieldy towards the end with some chapter topics getting lost in the sprawling story
- Did not include the story of Larry Nichols and his "Clinton Body Count" conspiracy theory in the story of Bill Clinton, which is essential to understanding how Hillary Clinton became what she is today.
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- M. Ziff
- 12-11-24
Brilliant.
Why did I like this? Because the facts and history are presented as is - no winks or 'hey, I'm a slick guy, didya get that?'. Allusions aren't needed. The subtle points aren't subtle. They're right there. But if one were to have no knowledge or lucky enough to not remember the last 8-9 years, this book would be a mystery. And that the storyline were gesturing towards a big empty field, trying to point *something* out. So the obvious points are not so obvious and subtleties are obfuscation. The only big neon arrow that gives up the game is the title and cover. Everything seems like it's left to the reader to decipher, but it's blatant in it's through lines and the names that keep popping up. The book doesn't really have a stance - if you were naïve enough to not to draw one. There's no lessons in the takeaway, other than the old gem 'there's nothing new under the sun'. I'd say that this book isn't a 1:1 companion to the documentary "HyperNormalisation" but they complement and support each other's message. The Gipper really tipped the domino that started the slow chain reaction that has naturally led to the 2024 catastrophe. And I believe that that both of these (the doc and this book) aren't the result of cherry picking and massaging of facts to fit the modern news cycle, but more like a retrospective that is and was obviously heading to where we are. It's a polite way of saying "many, many, many people said this was going to happen, here's the big points and... we told ya so." I love the font on the cover, it screams late 70-80's 'sophisticated conservative'. The whole book is just an engrossing read. There were a few times I had to go back to re-listen because I thought "no way... (xyz) didn't directly say/do (abc)." But alas, (xyz) most certainly (abc)'d. And the dots are all there, all connected. There's a room out there covered in pins and red yarn and centered around some shadowy "Pepe Silva" character - this book was written in that room. This book is the result of 1000 Charlie's chain smoking and pecking at typewriters. It only took from 1980 until the final draft hit the editor's desk. Quite impressive. On all fronts. Welcome to the Machine, where the new boss is the old boss, and fool me twice - I won't get fooled again.
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- Brian Hamilton
- 08-03-24
Best Rise of Trump Book
...and he's barely in it. Ganz paves the road with riveting capsule biographies of well-known figures that I thought I knew much better than he reveals I did. Highly recommend.
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