Tired of Winning

by Richard Cooke

Polarised, enraged and spiritually bereft, America under Donald Trump seems to be on the brink of failure

In this dazzling debut, award-winning Australian writer Richard Cooke takes a close-up look at the state of the United States. From the theology of opioids to the aftermath of a mass shooting, from #MeToo to the paintings of George W. Bush, Cooke’s reporting takes him from an East Coast ravaged by climate change to the dangerous world of the US–Mexico border.

This is not another diner-hopping week in Trump country: it’s a radical effort to capture dissonant and varied Americas, across more than twenty states. In brilliantly rendered accounts of poets, politicians and poisoned cities, Cooke finds a nation splintering under the weight of alienation – but showing resilience and hope in the most unexpected ways.

Entertaining and terrifying in equal measure, Tired of Winning reveals the schisms and the clamour of contemporary America.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2019

About the author

Richard Cooke is an internationally-based writer, screenwriter and author.

He is the Monthly magazine’s Contributing Editor and US Correspondent. He has contributed to the The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, The New Republic, The Guardian, and Longreads, among others.

His work has been selected for the Best of Longform and Best Australian Essays multiple times.

He is a two-time Walkley Award winner, a former finalist in the Walkley-Pascall arts critic’s award, and was the 2018 Mumbrella Publish Awards Columnist of the Year.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

What an odd book. I found it really hard to follow. The writer didn’t only use some really obscure words (I was yelling out, “ok google, what’s the definition of...” every few minutes), he also used them in a disjointed narrative that didn’t make much sense at all. I know it’s more a collection of essays but even in each essay I’d find myself not understanding what or who he was referring to, why, or what relevance it had. However, the last chapter was better than the whole book had been up until that point, for me. Completely different writing style.

Overall it covered some interesting things but I mainly got the impression that Cooke was trying to come across as overly intellectual and witty - but ended up being too confusing for his own good.

[Ned Hirst · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election? Apart from the fact that it has been asked so often, one of the reasons I have begun to find this question uninteresting is that it tends to assume that had Hillary Clinton won the presidency, everything in America would be fine. In fact, Richard Cooke argues, Trump is a symptom of a deeper malaise in the States, one which is both harder to describe and harder to fix than an aberrant commander-in-chief. The more interesting question, therefore, is what kind of a country makes the election of Donald Trump possible?

In this book, Cooke provides a series of vignettes and impressions of America, on topics ranging from mass shootings to opiods to the surprising appeal of Jordan Peterson. Some of the information is startlingly new, but much of it is a deeper dive into issues and events already extensively covered in the mainstream media. None of these feel tedious, however, partly because Cooke is genuinely insightful and partly because he has a gift for pithy expressions that are a joy to read. His description of Peterson as a "kind of Alain de Botton for incels", for example, hits the mark so exquisitely I can't help thinking it would work well on a T-shirt.

One surprise, although it ought not be as surprising as it is, is that Trump's appearances in the book are fairly slight. But his media presence is so colossal that not only is it hard to imagine anything new being said about the president, it is also refreshing to read about the contemporary America carrying on life around him and without him. Cooke takes a refreshingly unjaundiced view of all his subjects, with sometimes surprising results, the most surprising being his unironic affection for the paintings of George W Bush (although this does come with the concession that the former president "is not great at faces").

So does the book explain contemporary America? No, but no book could and this book at least has the considerable virtue of giving the reader new things to think about and compelling insights about aspects of America that may have some explanatory power. In the end I was probably left with more questions than answers, but I think that is a consequence of being exposed to new themes and stories. Like the district attorney's office in the border town of Toledo (population 276,491) mistaking two killer border control agents being arraigned at the same time. What kind of a country is that?

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected something more accessible but my experience was that I didn't know enough about American culture and politics to understand many of the references. This was disappointing as I was hoped to be enlightened somewhat, though I did gain some insights, little of them hopeful.

[Jim Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having been to some of the parts of America that Cooke writes about, I recognise in these stories the desperate, decaying country and its lost citizens. Each vignette, whether about mass shootings or the opioid crisis, reveals the grimmest realities of the end of the American century.

‘Tired of Winning’ is about the America that begat Trumpism - a spiritually exhausted, financially and morally bankrupt nation whose institutions are wrecked by the strange cocktail of neoliberalism and fundamentalist religion we increasingly see echoes of in post-GFC Australia.

It isn’t all unremittingly grim. Cooke finds elements of hope and humanity amid the carnage, but one doesn’t coming away from reading this collection of journalistic observations of real life with any great confidence that America will survive the end of Trump.

[Ken Richards · Rating 3 out of 5]

An outsider pokes at the roadkill that is the USAs manifest destiny under the 45th president, and mostly sees the maggots emerging from its corpse. Lest the whole ugly story not be too depressing, the occasional glimmer of hope is held up to the light before once more diving into the mire.

The series of short essays mostly from the 2018 mid-term elections covers topics as diverse ad Flint's water crisis, the love of guns, mass shootings, fraught electoral contests, internet poets and George W Bush's artistic talent.

[Lee Belbin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a 'mixed bag'. I liked some bits that were clear and concise, and didn't take to other bits that seemed labored. Some good quotes and a fair amount of depression in reading this. A sign of worse to come I fear.

[Vincent DiGirolamo · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Australian social and political observer of the American scene who can really write, and, even rarer, is a first-class reporter of the old shoe leather and get-the-quote variety. Not a flattering picture of our historical moment, but it gets at some ugly truths and will be worth reading by the next generation, who will no doubt be flummoxed by how we managed to screw things up.

[Stuart Hodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating essay collection on contemporary America- on Trumpism, and a country unmoored in many ways from reality. Cooke is a fantastic guide, and his ways of closing his essays is masterful- some, including the close to his essay about the Capital Gazette massacre, made me gasp out loud.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting insights into the US and the current global political zeitgeist - but I feel this author is trying too hard - it’s not well put together and his style is very turgid. The last chapter, as other reviews have said, really is better than the rest of the book.

[Erin Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really is very good, hasn’t aged weirdly like so much Trump era stuff. Treats reporting in the US as foreign corro work, not blinded by the lights skip comes good like other things I’ve tried to read.

[Pat Nino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sprawling, but poignant reflections on the slow death of the US. Few really engaging chapters, few quite boring ones. Did not feel like it was written for a casual outside observer of the US, more for americanophiles.

[Tristan Damen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good range of stories and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

[TheCritterRick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on the US from an Australian reporter. It's a series of short essays mainly during the 2018 mid-term elections.

[Suzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty chilling. Detailed and well sourced story of election night, January 6, and its outcome. He did a great job and it's up to date to publication day. Read it and sheep.