In the past two decades, a discourse of crisis has emerged about the democratic institutions and political culture of the US: many structures of authority which people had more or less taken for granted are facing a massive public loss of trust. This volume takes an interdisciplinary and historical look at the transformations of authority and trust in the United States. The contributors examine government institutions, political parties, urban neighborhoods, scientific experts, international leadership, religious communities, and literary production. Exploring the nexus between authority and trust is crucial to understand the loss of legitimacy experienced by political, social, and cultural institutions not only in the United States but in Western democracies at large.

Günter Leypoldt is a professor of American literature and culture at Heidelberg University, the author of Cultural Authority in the Age of Whitman: A Transatlantic Perspective (2009), and editor of Intellectual Authority and Literary Culture in the US, 1790-1900 (2013) and Reading Practices (2015). Manfred Berg is the Curt Engelhorn Professor of American History at Heidelberg University. He is the author and editor of nineteen books, including The Ticket to Freedom: The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political Integration (2005); Popular Justice: A History of Lynching in America (2011); Woodrow Wilson. Amerika und die Neuordnung der Welt. Eine Biographie (2017).