The Cruelty Is the Point

Essays on the present American political moment, durable enough to outlast the news that prompted them. Serwer's argument is that the recent crises are not departures from American history but outgrowths of patterns as old as the country, and he reads each one against the past that produced it. The title phrase entered the language because it named something real. The book earns its place by refusing to treat the present as unprecedented, which is the first step to understanding it.

A journalist whose essays on the present American political moment proved durable enough to gather into a book. The Cruelty Is the Point collects and extends his argument that the present crises are not departures from American history but outgrowths of patterns as old as the country, read alongside the history that produced them. He writes the current moment with the historian's insistence on its roots.