Election 2020: Looking Back & Ahead

"If you're going to talk to someone in the aftermath of what's shaping up to be the most confounding presidential election in two decades, Julian Zelizer is your man," wrote East Hampton Star editor Baylis Greene in advance of last week's vote.

"The CNN political analyst and Princeton professor of history and political affairs is also the author of books about Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and, just this summer, a certain influential onetime member of Congress: "Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, the Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party."

"That's the book he'll be highlighting in a Zoom talk with David M. Alpern on Tuesday at 5 p.m. through the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. Mr. Alpern, a former senior editor at Newsweek and host of radio shows including "Newsweek on Air," wrote this hook in reviewing "Burning Down the House" for The Star: "How in the world did Donald Trump seduce, enslave, or essentially transform the Grand Old Party — as staid, sensible Republicans once called it?"

That assessment of the nation's perilous politics -- past, present and future -- was recorded for the library's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shk4rkeKzEE.

Enjoy! is not quite the right word, but hope you find it interesting.