When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

It’s a time out of joint with the two eras of—at least superficial—prosperity and optimism that preceded and followed it—but it may feel more familiar today. It was an era where America felt itself to be losing out: losing its dominant place in the world, losing the basis of its security and wealth, and losing its sense of itself, as if a storm cloud rapidly gathered over the country and the national mood suddenly turned dour, gloomy, fearful, and angry. Americans were fed up. Leaders found once-loyal constituencies deaf to their appeals, the two-party system received its strongest challenge for nearly a hundred years, the country witnessed its worst single episode of public disorder since the Civil War, and oddballs, cranks, and even crooks captured the public imagination more than staid figures of reasonable authority. Paranoia was the new common sense. The country seemed to be seeking something new, a break with the exhausted possibilities of the past but also a restoration, a way to recover what had been lost.