Democracy in the United States is under threat. The Trump administration's attack on the legacy of the civil rights movement is undermining America's claims to be a multi-racial democracy. This moment of peril has worrying parallels with a previous era of American history. The gains of the Reconstruction era after the civil war, which saw African Americans given full democratic rights, were totally reversed within a generation. There is a serious risk that the advances of the civil rights era - the 'Second Reconstruction' - will go the same way unless we learn from the past and appreciate that American democracy has never been a story of linear progress. Skilfully analysing the similarities - and the differences - between