Includes bibliographical references and index.

A crisis of legitimacy -- Crisis of confidence -- Crisis of identity -- Crisis of equality -- Turning right -- Fighting right -- Changing channels -- Dividing America -- New world orders -- Scandalized -- The roaring 1990s -- Compassion and terror -- The politics of mass destruction -- Polarized politics -- The Trump effect.

"In the middle of the 1970s, America entered a new era of doubt and division. Major political, economic, and social crises--Watergate, Vietnam, the rights revolutions of the 1960s--had cracked the existing social order. In the years that followed, the story of our own lifetimes would be written. Longstanding historical fault lines over income inequality, racial division, and a revolution in gender roles and sexual norms would deepen and fuel a polarized political landscape. In Fault Lines, leading historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer reveal how the divisions of the present day began almost four decades ago, and how they were echoed and amplified by a fracturing media landscape that witnessed the rise of cable TV, the internet, and social media. How did the United States become so divided?"-- Provided by publisher.