A raucous history of American demacy at its wildest-and a bold rethinking of the relationship between the people and their politics.

Demacy was broken. Or so many Americans believed in the decades after the Civil War.Shaken by economic and technological disruption, they found safety in tribal partisanship defined by race, class, and ethnicity. The results were the loudest, closest, and most violent elections in U.S. history. Yet paradoxically, these elections shaped a thrilling public culture of campaigning by ordinary citizens and drew our highest-ever voter turnouts. Then, at the century's end, a movement to tame demacy calmed the era's wild politics and crafted our modern norms and voting laws. But in restraining their savage system, reformers traded away participation for civility. This is the origin story for the "normal" politics today's Americans grew up with.

The Age of Acrimony offers a revelatory account of...