CONTRIBUTORS

THE HISTORIANS ON TRUMP P. 158

A. SCOTT BERG

A. Scott Berg, whose biographies have won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, commemorates President James Monroe and his Era of Good Feelings, a foil to today's dismal political climate. "Presidents set the psychological tone of the nation, and in less than a year the woefully ill-prepared Trump has created a constant din of anger, bluster, and lies," says Berg, whose "Profile in Discouragement" is on page 168.

ROBERT DALLEK

Best-selling biographer Robert Dallek's newest work, Franklin D. Roosevelt: 4 Political Life, comes out in November. In "Powers of Separation/' on page 163, Dallek compares the temperament and experience of our 45th president to those of our 32nd. Says Dallek, "The job is difficult enough for even the most skilled politician, let alone someone as unqualified as Donald Trump."

EDMUND MORRIS

In "Ghosts Writing," on page 166, Edmund Moms, the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, channels an imagined conversation with them about our current president. "Actually, their quotes are authentic," says Morris. "They confronted the same issues that we recoil fr om today" Moms is now wiiting a life of Thomas Edison.

STACY SCHIFF

hi "Fever Swamp," on page 161, Stacy Scliiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the biography Vera (Mrs. Fladimu'Nabokov) and T/w ItUchr.s, on the Salem witch trials, shows that President Tramp's rabble-rousing, conspiratorial administration has cautionary precedents in our nation's history. "The president owes his election to artificial fear," Scliiff says, "so it makes sense that he has to keep fabricating it."

GARRY WILLS

Garry Wills, author ofNixon Agonistes and the Pulitzer I )rize winning Lincoln at Gettysburg, likens President Trump to President Nixon in "The Nixon Question/' on page 171. Ultimately, he pinpoints why, harmful as Nixon was, the comparison fails. "I don't know what will be the final mechanics of Trump's eviction," Wills says, "but it must be supported by a massive wave of moral revulsion." Wills's latest book, // hat the Quran Meant, comes out this month.

JON MEACHAM

Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Andrew Jackson, illustrates in "The Strength of Humility/' on page 158, two traits of John F. Kennedy's modesty and historical literacy that guided him in times of crisis. Considering how the absence of these traits, as in President Trump's brand of statecraft, may spell catastrophe, Meacham says, "it's unclear whether we ll be able to isolate the Trump administration as an aberration, as opposed to the opening act in a genuine decline and a much longer story."