The year that broke America An immigration crisis, a terrorist conspiracy, the summer of Survivor, a ridiculous fake billionaire, a fight for Florida, and the 537 votes that changed everything

Journalist Rice (The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget, 2009) posits that the year 2000 was a pivotal point in American political and cultural history. He ties together various events that would prove to have long-lasting consequences, including the Elian Gonzalez immigration case and the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush. He also charts the chilling ease with which Al Qaeda operatives were able to enroll in Florida flight schools undetected and, more humorously, the failed presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who entered the race as a Reform Party candidate. Rice focuses in on a few key people during that year, including Attorney General Janet Reno, who oversaw Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba; Al Gore, who distanced himself from President Clinton on the campaign trail; and David Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore. While a few of Rice's contentions feel forced, his narrative is propulsive and entertaining and he manages to make the outcome of that fateful election seem anything but assured. This book will appeal to readers of popular history à la Erik Larson's work.

Journalist Rice (The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget) offers a fast-paced and jam-packed political and cultural history of America in the year 2000. Pointing out that Florida was where some of the 9/11 hijackers learned to fly, where Donald Trump first planned to run for president, and where the controversy over Elián Gonzalez's immigration case played out, Rice characterizes the state as the "crucible" from which 21st-century America emerged. He vividly describes the family dynamics and hard-nosed tactics behind George W. Bush's political ascendancy, the impact Al Gore's candidacy had on his relationship with Bill Clinton, and the Supreme Court's 5--4 decision to end the Florida recount and award the presidency to Bush. Along the way, Rice offers new details about such well-known events as the "Brooks Brothers Riot" and weaves in the unlikely story of a Black Wall Street executive involved in a money-laundering and arms-trafficking scheme with links to Osama bin Laden. Impressively sourced and energetically written, this is a rollicking account of how the country got to where it is today. (Feb.)

Chronicling a chaotic year in American life (not 2020). Journalist Rice, a contributing editor at New York Magazine, draws on a mixture of reportage, archival sources, interviews, and legal testimony to create a heady portrait of the year 2000, which he claims marked a shattering turning point for the nation. Wildly digressive and overlong, the narrative veers from politics to business, immigration to terrorism, Florida to Kandahar. He begins in late 1999, when Ziad Jarrah left Germany to engage in terrorist training. His life would end on Sept. 11, 2001, in an attack orchestrated by Osama bin Laden. It was a year when the nation's cultural elite were presided over by a cast of men whose fortunes would fall precipitously in the decades that followed: film mogul Harvey Weinstein, TV executives Les Moonves and Roger Ailes, Fox News talking head Bill O'Reilly, and Matt Lauer. On the political scene, Al Gore struggled to separate himself from the huge personality of Bill Clinton, while George W. Bush honed his identity as an "easygoing centrist" and "compassionate conservative." The election in which the Supreme Court decided for Bush was the first since 1888 in which a candidate who won the popular vote still lost. On the immigrant front, the family battle over custody of Elián Gonzalez played out on TV, a spectacle that cultural critic Frank Rich called a "relentless hybrid of media circus, soap opera and tabloid journalism." Reality TV, not limited to real-life events, was shaped into a new genre of entertainment with CBS's hugely popular Survivor. Among the dramatis personae in Rice's well-populated history are Janet Reno, Clinton's attorney general; David Boies, Gore's lawyer; financier Kevin Ingram, involved in the "gangland culture" of Deutsche Bank; real estate tycoon Donald Trump, ruminating on the idea of running for office, and his then-girlfriend Melania Knauss; and activist Jesse Jackson. Though Rice doesn't mount a fully convincing argument for the year's significance, he tells a lively story. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.