America is polarized by identity. Over the past fifty years in America, partisan identities have merged with racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities, attaining a weight that is breaking much in politics and tearing at the bonds that hold the country together. Political analyst Ezra Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century and what that polarization did to the way people see the world and one another. He traces the feedback loops—between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions—driving the system toward crisis.

Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, it offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Donald Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.