Mark Danner
- Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Articles by Mark Danner
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship
The Wind Cries Freedom, the new book from Z co-founder Michael Albert, is a sweeping oral history of a future American revolution. Through thirty interconnected chapters, it draws out the strategies, failures, turning points, and hard-won wisdom of a movement that called itself the Revolutionary Participatory Society.
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship Published August 16, 2026 Reviewed: Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan Simon and Schuster, 464 pp., $34.00 Amid the tumult and the bluster and the noise, what exactly makes our singular president tick? After revisiting in minute detail the innumerable outrages and atrocities of Donald Trump’s second term we come upon, in the epilogue to Regime Change, the purported answer.
La dictadura constitucional de Trump
Traducción Alejandro Garvie Reseña del libro, Cambio de régimen: Dentro de la presidencia imperial de Donald Trump. Por Maggie Haberman y Jonathan Swan. En medio del tumulto, la fanfarronería y el ruido, ¿qué es exactamente lo que motiva a nuestro singular presidente? Tras repasar con todo detalle los innumerables ultrajes y atrocidades del segundo mandato de Donald Trump, encontramos, en el epílogo de Cambio de régimen, la supuesta respuesta.
Trump’s Constitutional Dictatorship | Mark Danner
Amid the tumult and the bluster and the noise, what exactly makes our singular president tick? After revisiting in minute detail the innumerable outrages and atrocities of Donald Trump’s second term we come upon, in the epilogue to Regime Change, the purported answer. The New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, having mostly completed their epic chronicle, arrive at the now-gilded Oval Office for their “fact-checking” interview.
What If He Wins? A Conversation About Trump and the Law | Fintan O’Toole
The New York Review of Books presents the fourth installment in a series of online events in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. New York Review contributors Fintan O’Toole, Pamela Karlan, and Mark Danner discuss the legal issues at stake during the upcoming presidential election. You may view all available recordings in this series on this page.
Getting Out the Fear Vote | Mark Danner
As Trump improvises at his rallies, his grim imaginings of a mongrelized, crime-ridden country are transformed into unfalsifiable myths. Piroschka Van de Wouw/Reuters He do the Police in different voices. —Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend Tottering on tiptoes, my eyes darting here and there to pick out that spot of pale orange in the forest of waving arms, I feel my body suddenly quake in a blast of noise. The young woman pressed against my left elbow, a girl really—fourteen?
The Slow-Motion Coup | Mark Danner
Books Drawn on for This Essay: Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency by Michael Wolff Henry Holt, 312 pp., $29.99; $18.99 (paper) The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague Atlantic Monthly, 312 pp., $28.00 How to Stop a Conspiracy: An Ancient Guide to Saving a Republic by Sallust, translated from the Latin and with an introduction by Josiah Osgood Princeton University Press, 195 pp., $16.95 1.
We’re in an Emergency—Act Like It! | Mark Danner
At a time when the threat of authoritarianism is rising, Democrats have a duty to make crystal clear to voters what is at stake in the November elections. Amid the blaring, pulsating hype of American culture, every election is routinely proclaimed the most important in our lifetime. Now the flood of heart-stopping news this summer—the Uvalde school massacre, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the January 6 revelations—has brought us face to face with an exceptional problem: What if this one really is?
‘Reality Rebellion’
Illustration by Anthony Gerace 1. Workmen have stripped the barbed wire from around the Capitol. The shattered windows have been replaced. The blood has been scrubbed away. And from the halls of the grand white-domed building the National Guard troops have at last departed. The coup that did not succeed in overturning the election goes unpunished. More than four hundred of its foot soldiers have been arrested but its instigator remains at large.
Journalism in a Time of Crisis
On February 24, 2021, The New York Review of Books and Community Bookstore presented a conversation with Mark Danner, Elizabeth Bruenig, Howard French, and Justine van der Leun, moderated by Darryl Pinckney. The five writers, all contributors to the Review, discussed how contemporary journalism has been affected by the current moment of political and social crisis. Below are selected highlights from the panelists’ remarks, and a video recording of the event.
Trump is no longer president, but his army of supporters won’t just go away Original
UC Berkeley journalism professor Mark Danner was one of many reporters that covered the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Her, people listen as then-President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Washington moments before the Capitol building was seiged. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) This story first appeared in The New York Review of Books (Copyright 2021).
‘Be Ready to Fight’
Harsh and gray dawned the day of the Stupid Coup, with a lowering sky of dense dark clouds, slippery muddy grass underfoot, and a stiff, unforgiving wind that kept the “Stop the Steal” flags flapping.
The Con He Rode In On
Evan Vucci/AP Images Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally, Freeland, Michigan, September 10, 2020 Amid the sensory swirl of the airplane hangar in Freeland, Michigan—the thousands of voices screaming, the red MAGA hats bobbing and shifting, the fifty-foot flags on cranes flapping and snapping, the long sleek blue-and-white bulk of Air Force One gleaming, the elbow-to-elbow crowd heaving and swelling (and, in my worried fancy, the predatory virus molecules dancing ominously amid the sea...
Mark Danner Like an untreated infection within the political system, the Iran Contra affair continues to grow...
By Mark Danner June 17, 1991 Like an untreated infection within the political system, the Iran-Contra affair continues to grow, spreading corruption not only into the future but, oddly, back into the past as well. The inconclusive results of the congressional hearings on the affair loom over the reaction, or lack of one, to recent allegations about a so-called October Surprise before the 1980 Presidential election.
Pattern of Deception: From Trump Family Business to Grifter in Chief
Pattern of Deception: From Trump Family Business to Grifter in Chief Sonia Moskowitz/Getty ImagesDonald Trump attending the opening of the Trump Taj Mahal casino with his sister Maryanne and brother Robert (all now named in a lawsuit from their niece, Mary, accusing them of cheating her and her brother out of their inheritance), Atlantic City, New Jersey, April 1990 Last month, Donald Trump’s niece sued him in federal court. Trump has been sued hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
The Forever War?
The Forever War? Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War by Mark Danner Simon and Schuster, 267 pp., $26.00 Dominique NabokovMark Danner, New York City, November 2007 The battle against terrorism has become America’s forever war. The original congressional authorization for the war—the Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) of September 2001—has now been bent and enlarged to embrace enemies that it did not mention or envisage when it was written.
This Soldier’s Witness to the Iraq War Lie
This Soldier’s Witness to the Iraq War Lie Stan Honda/AFP via Getty ImagesUS Army soldiers guarding detainees during a raid on a house in Tikrit, Iraq, July 28, 2003 A few weeks before I deployed to Iraq as a young US military officer, in the spring of 2003, my French-born father implored me to watch The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo’s dramatic reenactment of the 1950s Algerian insurgency against French colonial rule.
Moving Backward: Hypocrisy and Human Rights
Moving Backward: Hypocrisy and Human Rights Maren Hennemuth/picture alliance via Getty ImagesGuantánamo Bay detention camp, Cuba, October 2018 The following text is adapted from the 2019 Robert B. Silvers Lecture, delivered at the New York Public Library in honor of the founding co-editor of the New York Review, who died in 2017. Though my title fits the grim tone of our age, the truth is that this is a joyous occasion for me.
Vanguard Books: Books
TORTURE & TRUTH AMERICA, ABU GHRAIB & THE WAR ON TERROR by MARK DANNER PUBLICATION DATE: 2004 ISBN: 186207772X PB PRICE: $26.53 / Rs4,112.00
The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means
The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means Download the text of the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody by The International Committee of the Red Cross, along with the cover letter that accompanied it when it was transmitted to the US government in February 2007. This version, reset by The New York Review, exactly reproduces the original including typographical errors and some omitted words.
Our New Politics of Torture
Our New Politics of Torture DigitalGlobe/ScapeWare3d/Getty ImagesSatellite imagery of “the Salt Pit,” codename for a clandestine CIA prison and interrogation center north of Kabul, Afghanistan, December 11, 2014 New York Review contributor Mark Danner has been writing about the use of torture by the US government since the first years after September 11.
How Dick Cheney Became the Most Powerful Vice President in History
It was Dick Cheney, more than any other official, who set the terms for the post-9/11 world we all share. fb tw mail Print msg wa sms Former vice president Dick Cheney in the Old Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Thank you for signing up.
Poetic Variations on An American Theme
he United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem." Thus Walt Whitman, in his 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass, expressed what has been the American poet's struggle from the beginning - to wrest from the land a separate work of art. In honor of the Academy of American Poets, which celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year, Harper's publishes fifteen poems reflecting this passion to explore the American text. No other country's history offers so dramatic a parallel to.
Report Outlines Involvement of Medical Workers in Abusive C.I.A. Interrogations
WASHINGTON ? Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.
Five Books: The best books on <span class='subject'>The Reagan Era</span>, recommended by Doug Rossinow
Doug Rossinow is a professor of history at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of a number of books, including Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America and, most recently, The Reagan Era: A History of the 1980s. Doug Rossinow is a professor of history at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, Minnesota.
He Remade Our World | by Mark Danner
Almost exactly a decade ago, Vice President Dick Cheney greeted President George W. Bush one morning in the Oval Office with the news that his administration was about to implode. Or not quite: Cheney let the president know that something was deeply wrong, though it would take Bush two more days of increasingly surprising revelations, and the near mass resignation of his senior Justice Department and law enforcement officials, to figure out exactly what it was.
In the Darkness of Dick Cheney | by Mark Danner
If you’re a man of principle, compromise is a bit of a dirty word. —Dick Cheney, 2013 In early 2007, as Iraq seemed to be slipping inexorably into chaos and President George W.
Larry Towell
By Larry Towell Publisher : Publisher : GOST Books 2024 | 116 pages The History War by Larry Towell is a visually compelling and deeply immersive exploration of Ukraine’s tumultuous history, blending photographs, collages, and ephemera into a multifaceted narrative. This book provides a panoramic view of Ukraine’s struggle for independence, from the 5th century to the present day, chronicling the personal and political upheavals that have shaped the nation.
Skin in the Game
On January 20, when Barack Obama congratulated Donald Trump at his successor’s inauguration, he was no doubt anxious about his legacy—and nowhere perhaps more so than in matters of national security. While Obama did draw down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and refused to commit ground forces in Syria, he left office with the world hovering on the brink of a precipice.
What He Could Do
What He Could Do Donald Trump; drawing by James Ferguson What we are witnessing now is the birth of a new political order, and the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes….1 —Stephen K.
The CIA: The Devastating Indictment | by Mark Danner
Mark Danner has been writing in these pages about the use of torture by the US government since the first years after September 11, 2001. Following the release in December 2014 of the Senate’s report on the CIA torture program, Hugh Eakin spoke to Danner for the New York Review blog about some of the most startling findings of the investigation and what it reveals about the continued political debate surrounding the program.
The New York Review of Books
Damon Winter/The New York Times/Redux Donald Trump at his campaign rally at Pittsburgh International Airport, November 2016 Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. —Federalist 10 1.
The Politics of Fear | by Mark Danner
Amid the clamorous controversies of this election campaign, what strikes one here on the West Bank of the Jordan is the silences.
Down Goes Trump | by Elizabeth Drew | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
Donald Trump made the 2016 presidential election his plaything from the outset so it’s no surprise that he’s doing that to the end. The electoral process wasn’t something he respected; it was another tool for promoting himself, his long-running reality TV show having taken him far but not far enough for his ambitions to be super-famous. His entry into the presidential race now seems so long ago that we tend to forget the extent to which his becoming a candidate was considered a joke.
On the Election—II | by Mark Danner
All American elections tend to be touted as historic, for all American culture tends toward the condition of hype. Flummoxing, then, to be confronted with a struggle for political power in which, for once, all is at stake. We have long since forfeited the words to confront it, rendering superlatives threadbare, impotent. No accident that among so many other things Donald J.
How George Orwell's Dystopian Novel '1984' Illuminates the U.S.'s Endless War on Terror
How George Orwell's Dystopian Novel '1984' Illuminates the U.S.'s Endless War on Terror The following is an excerpt from the new book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War by Mark Danner (Simon & Schuster, 2016): After all his warnings about defining the war lest it define us, President Obama finds himself alighting on the status quo as the least unattractive option. We go on with our endless war and our unending state of exception.
The Magic of Donald Trump
Primed for miracles and wonders, Trumpsters in their thousands tilt their heads up toward the blue-black Florida sky.
Raoul Coutard on The Confession
You may not know his name, but Raoul Coutard is a crucial figure in modern cinema. A war photographer turned cinematographer, he was the camera man of choice for many directors of the French New Wave, shooting an astonishing array of classics from that period, including Breathless, Shoot the Piano Player, Lola, Jules and Jim, Vivre sa vie, Pierrot le fou, and many more.
State of Siege: Their Torture, and Ours
SANTORE (impatient): We inevitably end up speaking of politics . . . HIS INTERROGATOR (ironic): Inevitably . . . Revolutionary times are times of revelation: they uncover and flood with light what has long been darkly buried. Implicit in the above exchange between a kidnapped Philip Michael Santore (Yves Montand) and his masked Tupamaro inquisitor, Hugo (Jacques Weber), in Costa-Gavras’s State of Siege (1972) is the unassailable conviction that politics forms the hidden skeleton of our world.
The Best Books on The Reagan Era
Why do you think Ronald Reagan occupies such a warm place in so many American hearts? There are a number of reasons. One is that the Cold War ended, or began to end, in the later years of his presidency and he’s closely associated with that. I find this when I teach students about Ronald Reagan and the 1980s. They quite readily say they know next to nothing about Reagan — or literally nothing — except that they believe he played an important role in ending the Cold War on America’s terms.
The Gitmo connection
GUANTÁNAMO DIARY (editor: Larry Siems) Little, Brown & Company; 379 pages; $29 On or about September 11, 2001, American character changed. What Americans had proudly flaunted as "our highest values" were now judged to be luxuries that in a new time of peril the country could ill afford. Justice, and its cardinal principle of innocent until proven guilty, became a risk, its indulgence a weakness.
‘Guantánamo Diary,’ by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
What crime indeed? If guilt is assumed, how to prove innocence?
Our New Politics of Torture
New York Review contributor Mark Danner has been writing about the use of torture by the US government since the first years after September 11. Following the release this month of the Senate’s report on the CIA torture program, Hugh Eakin spoke to Danner about some of the most startling findings of the investigation and what it reveals about the continued political debate surrounding the program.
Iraq: The New War
We see the world through the stories we tell, and until recently the story most Americans told themselves about the war in Iraq was a simple and dramatic narrative of imminent threat, daring triumph, and heroic liberation—a story neatly embodied in images of a dictator’s toppling statue and a president in full flight gear swaggering across a carrier deck.
THE TRUTH OF EL MOZOTE
The New Yorker, December 6, 1993 P. 50 A REPORTER AT LARGE about the massacre of the inhabitants of El Mozote, El Salvador, by Salvadoran Army troops of the Atlacatl companies, trained in the U.S. under the command of Gen. Domingo Monterrosa. Describes the political background of the massacre, and gives an eyewitness account by one woman, Rufina Amaya Marquez, who escaped the slaughter by sneaking away when soldiers were occupied with killing other women from the village.
Mark Danner The Truth of El Mozote
HEADING up into the mountains of Morazán, in the bright, clear air near the Honduran border, you cross the Torola River, the wooden slats of the one-lane bridge clattering beneath your wheels, and enter what was the fiercest of El Salvador's zonas rojas — or "red zones," as the military officers knew them during a decade of civil war — and after climbing for some time you take leave of the worn blacktop to follow for several miles a bone-jarring dirt track that hugs a mountainside, and soon...
He Remade Our World | Mark Danner
Why didn’t I know about this? —George W. Bush Almost exactly a decade ago, Vice President Dick Cheney greeted President George W. Bush one morning in the Oval Office with the news that his administration was about to implode.
In the Darkness of Dick Cheney
If you’re a man of principle, compromise is a bit of a dirty word. —Dick Cheney, 2013 In early 2007, as Iraq seemed to be slipping inexorably into chaos and President George W.
Dick Cheney's dark legacy: It's his world, we're just living in it
If you’re a man of principle, compromise is a bit of a dirty word. -- Dick Cheney, 2013 1. “We Ought to Take It Out” In early 2007, as Iraq seemed to be slipping inexorably into chaos and President George W.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Mark
Contact Mark, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack