Notice: I've read the german eBook version, because I couldn't find an english eBook.

Its an interesting book. The reader learns about the rules of democracy, especially about the unwritten behaviour rules that make the system work. The book tells a lot of history of the United States and how it made laws to exclude afroamerican people from voting.

The big lesson is that democracies usually don't fail in one catastrophic event, its just a number of small changes in behaviour that make the system fail in the long run. It also explains that Trump is destroying much of the democratic guidelines, but that he got elected is a result that the respect between the political players eroded over time.

I decided for a 4 star rating because the book seems a bit biased to me. The authors explain a lot about e.g. the attempts of the Nazis in the 1930's to influence american politics. But it tells the story about the coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 without mentioning how the US was influencing this regime change. The only mention was that the CIA founded a political party in Chile, but I think that the USA was much deeper into this coup. So its drawing a picture of US democracy in danger now after the election of Trump, but its remaining silent about the bad influence that US foreign policy had on other democratic governments world wide.