Trump Has Divided the Country. Some Americans Are Trying to Bring Us Back Together

Between 2011 and 2016, I ventured across America’s political divide. I live in Berkeley, California, a liberal town in a liberal state, and in those years, I tried to step into the shoes of those living in a deeply conservative town, a center of the petrochemical industry: Lake Charles, in a conservative state, Louisiana. It’s a story I tell in my 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Nearly all the people I came to know voted for Donald Trump — most with...