The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order analyses the history of a political order that emerged in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, dominated American politics in the 1990s and 2000s, and fractured during the 2010s when Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders rose to prominence. Its power was built on an array of donors, policy entrepreneurs, and politicians that coalesced under Reagan. That coalition overturned the regulatory regime and ideological hegemony of New Deal order that had dominated American politics for forty years and made neoliberalism America’s dominant creed of political economy. The book argues that neoliberalism is a better term than conservatism for understanding the politics of this era. At the same time, it reworks the meaning and significance of neoliberalism. First, it insists that neoliberalism was much closer in character to the ideology of 19th century classical liberalism than is commonly acknowledged. Second, it argues that an elite-driven model for understanding neoliberalism is not sufficient to understand this ideology’s broad appeal; one must also reckon with how its promise of individual freedom drew both working-class Americans and erstwhile New Leftists to its banner. Third, the book identifies the collapse of the Soviet Union and of its legitimating ideology—communism—as critical factors in the neoliberal order’s triumph and restores the centrality of the Cold War to an understanding of our time. The book concludes with an analysis about how the problems left unsolved by the neoliberal order paved the way for Donald Trump’s rise and triumph.