Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-263) and index.

"It will take a miracle" -- "Where's my Steve?" -- Bildungsroman -- "A dangerous way to look at the world" -- Nobody builds walls like Trump -- The alt-Kochs -- A rolling tumbleweed of wounded male id and aggression -- "The traffic is absolutely filthy!" -- "Honest populism" -- Burn everything down -- "The FBI has learned of the existence..." -- Afterword: Kali Yuga.

"The shocking elevation of Steve Bannon to head Trump's flagging presidential campaign on August 17, 2016, hit political Washington like a thunderclap and seemed to signal the meltdown of the Republican Party. Bannon was a bomb-throwing pugilist who'd never run a campaign and was despised by Democrats and Republicans alike. Yet Bannon's hard-edged ethno-nationalism and his elaborate, years-long plot to destroy Hillary Clinton paved the way for Trump's unlikely victory. Trump became the avatar of a dark but powerful worldview that dominated the airwaves and spoke to voters whom others couldn't see. Trump's campaign was the final phase of a populist insurgency that had been building up in America for years, and Bannon, its inscrutable mastermind, believed it was the culmination of a hard-right global uprising that would change the world. The inside story of the partnership between Steve Bannon and Donald Trump - the key to understanding the rise of the alt-right, the fall of Hillary Clinton, and the hidden forces that drove the greatest upset in American political history. Joshua Green is a senior national correspondent for Bloomberg Businessweek"--Provided by publisher.