rather than trying prematurely to sketch the continuities of that half century of history, or attempting to project speculatively into the future, this book stays, as far as possible, in the moment itself. We will work backward and forward as the need for context arises, but the focus will be squarely on the chain of events between the outbreak of the virus in January 2020 and the inauguration of Joe Biden. These tight chronological limits are a deliberate choice. It is a way of making tractable the tension between past and present that defines what it means to write history. It is also a
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