The Year That Broke America is a welcome addition to a frankly overcrowded pantheon of books written about our current American culture because this is blessedly not about the period of 2016-2020.

The year 2000 was its own special dumpster fire, however. I turned 11 that year and remember many of these major events and players from the nightly news, but of course didn’t understand too much until I got older. The pacing really elevated the vast spread of material; Rice jumps in and out of many subjects but manages to make a lengthy read actually go by pretty quickly.

I especially liked reading about Janet Reno, because I only associated her with Will Ferrell’s impression of her on SNL (which hilariously gets a mention in this book.) It was also interesting learning more about various people and the nonsense they were up to--or would be up to. Bit foreboding seeing so many burgeoning politicians and celebrities who would make news much later on.

It is truly cringe-inducing and terrifying thinking about all the problems we have now and how their repercussions will affect our country in twenty years’ time.