What Were We Thinking

This is the book I have been looking for since November 2016. I wanted to find something that would explain to me how we elected 45 and how we were going to survive him. Fortunately for me, Carlos Lozada read a LOT of books (150 of them!) and summarizes their themes and messages through 10 topically-related chapters that discuss books written about the “white working class” voter, the chaos inside the White House, radical leftist resistance and conservative apologies, the death of truth and so much more about the turned-upside down world we have inhabited for the past four years.

Intellectually this is a good book, but the chapters in which Lozada allows himself a personal connection are stunning. The most devastating chapters were the ones written about #MeToo and immigration. Neither were new phenomena, but they were both exacerbated and impacted by Trump's election. You can feel Lozada's pain and growth as he realizes what women endured at the hands of Harvey Weinstein, et al, and how Trump's infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings made that pain so much more devastating. And as a former immigrant himself, Lozada's insights into the current crisis enrich the books he recommends.

Ultimately Lozada believes that the best books of the past four years don't view Trump as an isolated aberration but as the product of American history and politics. What We Were Thinking was released before the November 2020 election, but if he were writing an epilogue today I'm sure the author would warn readers that a Biden presidency doesn't mean all of our problems are solved. The factors that created a Trump presidency are still there and we have to examine and deal with them in order to prevent Trump 2024 or someone (god help us) even worse.