P&P Live!: Julian Zelizer - Burning Down the House - in conversation with Evan Thomas

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump "is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party." Perhaps more than any other politician, Newt Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades. In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies.

Julian E. Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and a CNN Political Analyst. His most recent books are Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (co-authored with Kevin Kruse) and The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society, the winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for Best Book on Congress.

Evan Thomas is the author of ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers John Paul Jones, Sea of Thunder, and Being Nixon. Thomas was a writer, correspondent, and editor for thirty-three years at Time and Newsweek, including ten years as Washington bureau chief at Newsweek, where, at the time of his retirement in 2010, he was editor at large.