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    Liar's Circus:

    A Strange and Terrible Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies

    In this daring work of immersive journalism based on hundreds of hours of reporting, Carl Hoffman, who has written about the most dangerous and remote corners of the world, journeys deep inside Donald Trump’s rallies, seeking to understand the strange and powerful tribe that forms the president’s base.

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  • "Joining the infatuated at campaign rallies from Minnesota to Texas, Hoffman brilliantly evokes both the hypnotic cadences of a demagogue and the misguided faith of his followers. He plunges with them down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, grievances, and alienation—without ever losing sight of their humanity. It is trenchant, surprising and profound.”

    Joshua Hammerbestselling author of The Falcon Thief and The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu
  • "Liar's Circus is a brilliant, riveting, funny, terrifying, unflaggingly readable journey into the beating heart of Trumpland. With the same zest, curiosity and deep humanity that has drawn him to immerse in cultures all over the world, he waits in line, finds a seat, and transports the reader to the front row of a succession of signature Trump rallies. Along the way he connects (and camps out) with a cast of fanatic rallygoers who are by turns surreal, odd, lonely, friendly, scary, sympathetic, awful-- and important. The book reads like a dream. You will consume it whole at a single sitting."

    Liza Mundybestselling author of Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
  • "A wildly entertaining road trip into the belly of the beast that is Trump rallies. Hoffman never condescends or dismisses and brings these Americans to life with fascinating subtleties and contradictions. Many of us have wondered “who are these people” and Hoffman answers that question with great grace and understanding. It’s a hell of a trip.”

    Stuart StevensGOP political operative and author of It Was All A Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump
  • “Hoffman often shakes his head in wonderment but rarely condescends, and he approaches his subject with scholarly vigor, sometimes quoting from heady philosophical and sociological sources while retaining a sense of fraught adventure: “If Trumpism was a place, then it was a place I could travel to just as surely as a village in the swamps of New Guinea or the huts of nomads in the rain forests of Borneo.” What he discovered speaks volumes about economic uncertainty, racism, xenophobia, fundamentalism, and other populist dog whistles that “lay at the heart of Trump’s message and his power.” A valuable portrait of authoritarianism in action and its more-than-willing adherents.”

    Kirkusstarred review

About the author

  • Carl Hoffman

    Carl Hoffman is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest, which was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” a NY Times best seller and one of the Washington Post’s 50 notable books of 2014.

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  • Liar's Circus

    latest book

    Liar's Circus

    A Strange and Terrible Journey Into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies
    Read More
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    The Last Wild Men of Borneo

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    Savage Harvest

    A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest for Primitive Art
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  • The Lunatic Express

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