Book review: How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time

How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter At a Time by Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark.  St. Martin's  Press, New York, September 2026.

This book is hot off the press.  I ordered it in the spring and it arrived, from Barnes and Noble, on Sept. 8, 2026.  I finished reading it earlier this morning and have been thinking about it all day.  I wasn't sure that I would feel confident to write this review.  I feel confident writing reviews of other books on this blog, often simply because I loved the book and enjoy the challenge of the review process.  It is, primarily, why I keep this blog.  How to Eat an Elephant is about politics. This puts it in a different category for me.  I don't read books about politics.  I read newspaper and magazine articles, I listen to podcasts, but I never read books about politics.  Until now.  Well, I did read Abundance (March 2025) by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson and liked it, but I'm not sure it was about politics per se.  It is more about how our country has drifted further and further away from being a confident and competent nation, to one imperiled by dysfunction and stasis with an inability to do, build and complete important things.  This dysfunction, if it should be called that, impacts our political system and the ability of politicians to make good on their promises.  The authors' primary focus is on overly regulated blue states with powerful NIMBY movements that impede the ability to get meaningful things done for the American people.  Things we need.  Things that are necessary.

I remember exactly how I felt on the morning of November 6, 2024.  I didn't want to get out of bed.  It was cold and gray outside and it was easier to roll over and try to go back to sleep.  The evening before I had watched the election returns with a neighbor, but by 10:00 pm the writing was on the wall.  I had had enough.  I thanked my friend for letting me watch with her and went home.  I was relieved that I had nothing planned for the following day and getting through that November Wednesday was a slog.  I was listless and in denial.  I couldn't believe that Donald Trump had been elected for a second term.  Yet there it was, bold and flashing, in every news outlet.

I really thought I was not going to be able to deal with it.  Speaking with like-minded family and friends was not helpful. Everyone had their own take on the election; what went wrong, what would happen, not to mention all of the expletives used for Trump.  I'm no stranger to using expletives, but after a while they become hollow, performative and unhelpful. Then there were the family and friends who buried their heads in the sand.  Everywhere I looked grimness seemed to settle over every space.  That is, of course, unless you voted for Donald Trump.  Then I had to observe the triumph.  I didn't know how I was going to cope, but eventually the rough edges wore off.  In an effort to stay up-to-date with Trump's menace and rejiggering of the country to his liking, I read the NYT, the New Yorker, I watched the PBS Newshour, all of which were highly unsatisfying.  I read Heather Cox Richardson's daily Letters from an American and anything I saw with Anne Applebaum's name on it and these were helpful.  This went on for a while and then I came across The Bulwark's podcast The Next Level with Sarah Longwell, Jonathan Last (the famous JVL) and Tim Miller.  I was hooked with that first episode.  I listened to a couple more podcasts and knew I needed to join for the full experience.  These were people who were speaking to me.  This was around April or May of 2025, so it had taken me awhile to find my people.  I became a Bulwark member.

After over a year of listening to and reading The Bulwark, I know I am receiving information I can trust and count on.  It is occasionally gloomy, but not always.  Despite the ongoing onslaught of never ending corruption, lawlessness, and enough malfeasance by Trump, his family and his administration to choke a horse, The Bulwark somehow and miraculously, identifies and covers it all for their audience.

I overdosed.  I allowed podcasts and newsletters and other reading to rule my life for about a year until I realized that I needed a break.  This past June I took a ten day vacation to England and this helped me cut the cord.  I still listen and read, but not with the dedicated attention of my first Bulwark year.  However, I was on-line when JVL announced the upcoming publication of Sarah's book and requested that Bulwark members pre-order it.  I ordered it that day.

I first became aware of Sarah Longwell when she was a guest on Ezra Klein's NYT podcast sometime around April of 2024.  The election was still months away and Joe Biden was still the Democrats' candidate.  The topic of Klein's podcast was something like "What do Republicans want?"  Longwell was well-positioned to discuss this topic with Klein.  She had been doing voter focus groups for the past eight years.  Following Trumps election victory in 2016, and along with a few other conservatives (in the traditionally understood meaning of the word conservative, and now with the identity of Never Trumpers, late as that may be), Sarah Longwell started The Bulwark.  She covers this thoroughly in her book and it is deeply admirable.  After all, she was a young person, mid-30's perhaps, and she had the bandwidth to take this on.  Following the election results of 2016, when journalists, pundits and talking heads were identifying this, that and the other as the cause for Trump's victory (and their prescriptions for addressing the cause just as loopy), Sarah Longwell got to work to find out directly from voters why they had voted for Donald Trump.  She began doing focus group sessions with 2016 Trump voters, then continued with 2020 Trump to Biden voters and 2024 Biden to Trump voters.  She also included multiple time Trump voters.  (My own physician is a three time Trump voter.  I've always found her justifications flimsy at best.  I'm being charitable).

Now that Sarah has compiled a decade of direct voter feedback, she has synthesized all of this information to put her finger on the pulse of voters and the state of our country.  One of the things she understands, and speaks and writes about possibly better than anyone, is how our information systems have changed.  This is discussed in the chapter titled The Great American Media Crack-up.  There is a sub-heading titled, The Algorithmic Trap:  News Seekers vs. News Receivers in which Democratic politicians, and voters too, can never again look at media sources in the same way.  Think of Zohran Mamdani, the new NYC Mayor in 2025, as someone who understands this new mediascape.           

By the time I ordered How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, I was well-acquainted with Sarah's analysis and her way of explaining things.  Her book has blown me away.  Although I knew it would be good and helpful, I wasn't exactly sure what to expect.  Because I don't read books about politics I had no metric by which to gauge it.  Her writing is as smooth as butter and as clear as the waters of a high arctic lake.  Her understanding of this time in America's political history is without parallel.  Her organizational skills guide readers along.  There is no struggle to understand concepts or events.  I'm used to listening to Sarah Longwell and she writes as she speaks, only better.  If you want to understand the fix we are in, how we got here and how we can get out of it, you must read How to Eat an Elephant.  I feel a little sheepish writing you must as if it is a command.  But only a little.  You will not be disappointed.  This is an important book and I hope that every politician and anyone associated with a political campaign will read it.  Democrats, both politicians and voters, ignore these insights and information at our peril. 

This is a book not just for Democratic voters; it's also for Republican voters.  Democratic voters might find it easier to read and agree, but then must confront their own behaviors and ineffective strategies.  Republicans may not like what they read, but an honest appraisal will reveal the truth in it.  Longwell treats both sets of voters with respect and understanding. For politicians of both parties much soul searching is required.          

Longwell ends the book with the Two Wolves parable, "often attributed to Cherokee tradition and I reference [it] regularly because, at its core, it's about communications" (page 297).  How do we escape the Triangle of Doom?  We escape by feeding the good wolf.  How do we do this?  "Feeding the good wolf means leading with what Americans share: the desire for affordable lives, safe communities, and real opportunity.  It means developing messengers who can break through the noise with authenticity and force.  It means being strategic about engagement—letting the other side's contradictions do the fact-checking for you while you sell your vision constantly" (page 300).  She concludes with this graphic observation,  "The good wolf has been starving for most of the Trump era.  It's time for us to start feeding it" (page 301).

Longwell's final sentence is also  JVL's traditional podcast sign-off.  Good luck, America.

Addendum

From The Bulwark site, also published on September 13th, from the author herself:  How MAGA Bewildered Voters Into Its Alternate Reality.  

Related Reading

The Age of Reading is Over by Rose Horowitz, The Atlantic, August 2026 issue, pages 12-24.  Very broadly written article discusses the decline of reading, also called our post-literate age.  Among other things, this author discusses the impact on the quality of information people are receiving and its threat to democracy.  Page 20, column one has a paragraph on Donald Trump's communication style as an excellent example of our post-literate age.   

Clarification Note

In doing some on-line searching for this review, I learned that another book with the exact same title, How to Eat an Elephant by India Sturgis was published in England in May 2026.  Sturgis's book is about combating the mental illness of anxiety.  We still have over two more years of Trump's presidency, so you may want to purchase both books.