Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on today's show is Fred Siegel. Fred was editor of City Journal during its creation years 30 years ago, and he has remained one of our most valued contributors.

He's been a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for many years. In his academic career,

among other appointments, Fred has taught history and humanities at the Manhattan Institute for many years. In his academic career, among other appointments,

Fred has taught history and humanities at the Cooper Union, and since his retirement, he's been a scholar

in residence at St. Francis College in Brooklyn. Fred Siegel is the author of a number of

important books, including one of the great books ever written on the American

City. The future once happened here, New York, D.C., L.A., and the fate of America's big cities,

a book that has been a big influence on us at City Journal in the way we think about the trajectory

of recent American history. The Prince of the City, Giuliani, New York,

and the genius of American life was another book. That one looked at the remarkable turnaround

in New York under the Giuliani Merlty. In 2014, appeared the revolt against the masses, how liberalism has undermined the

middle class. But his latest book, and the reason he's joining us today, is called The Crisis of

Liberalism, Prelude to Trump. It's published by Telos Press, and you can find it on their website,

Amazon, or wherever books are sold. So welcome, Fred.

Thank you. Fred, your book is a history in many ways of our current moment, the culmination of

trends that emerged in full force during the long 1960s, as you call them, but that in fact originated much earlier.

The first section of your book is on the intellectual origins of modern American liberalism,

and one of the figures profiled is H.G. Wells.

Now, people mostly remember Wells these days as the author of science fiction classics,

War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, and so on. But he was for a time during the early decades

of the 20th century a kind of astonishingly influential figure, a futurist, public intellectual,

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