If you read only one book for America’s 250th Birthday, make it this one.
Johanna Neuman delivers a witty and thought-provoking tale of what happens when the Founders themselves return to witness the nation they created.
Through debates among Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and their peers—about slavery, freedom, government, and even fashion—readers glimpse the ideals and contradictions that shaped America. Their encounters with twenty-first-century politics, including conversations with President Trump and Alexander Hamilton’s dance with First Lady Melania Trump at a glamorous White House dinner, create a vivid portrait of history colliding with the present.
By turns satirical and serious, this novel bridges centuries, offering readers a fresh lens on the enduring question: what kind of republic has America become?
What if the Founding Fathers came back to see what became of their experiment in democracy?
Historian and novelist Johanna Neuman explores that question in her new book , Trump's Superpower, arriving just in time for America's 250th birthday.
In this interview, Neuman discusses the inspiration behind the book, what she imagines the Founders would make of modern America, and why she turned to fiction to explore the questions she's spent her career studying.
About Johanna
Johanna Neuman is a writer, historian, and political blogger of Substack’s Make Orwell Fiction Again. A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, she covered the White House, the State Department, and Congress for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. After receiving a PhD in history from American University, she wrote Gilded Suffragists: The New York Socialites Who Fought for Women’s Right to Vote, which documents the role of celebrity endorsements in galvanizing social change. It won an Independent Publishers’ Book Award. In Trump’s Superpower, she combines her love of history and knowledge of D.C. politics—and sights—to create a new take on both.
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