Fever Swamp

By fall 2015, the rise of Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee confirmed that, for better or worse, Americans had been transported to a strange new land populated by mysterious creatures, where the normal laws of the political universe no longer applied. Fascinated, amused, and appalled, bestselling novelist Richard North Patterson accepted an invitation to write one column per week for the Huffington Post on the presidential race.
Before long, thousands of Americans were reading Patterson's weekly descriptions of the campaign, a gauntlet without rules in which the projected psyches of the candidates reflected—and stirred—the roiling emotions of a substantially disgruntled electorate. Smart, prescient, funny, and deeply informed by extensive background research, these pieces form a narrative that captures the race as it occurred—the bald-faced lies, the painful truths, the pivotal issues, and the astonishing personalities that made the election of...