In a moment when the President of the United States is trying to use the power of the state to intimidate critics in academia and the media (not to mention his political opponents), some may think that a new book like Thomas Chatterton Williams’s Summer of Our Discontent, which focuses mainly on the illiberalism of the left, is terribly timed. They will fault the author for not “meeting the moment,” or worse, for “enabling” an autocrat by articulating “right-wing talking points.” Liberal critics have already panned the volume in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York magazine.
