One good way to gain perspective on the current presidency is to compare it to the myriad examples from the past where democracies have failed over time.
This book presents the thesis that Democracies die via combination of undermining institutions (guardrails) and abandoning unwritten norms that keep democracy as the arbitrater of power is a given system.
The authors compare democracy to a game of pickup basketball, the players change, and many of the rules are not well defined, but with enough norms and good-actors everybody can have fun, rather than getting into a brawl.
While I agree with the overall thesis and appreciate both the international examples and examples from American history, I still wish the authors spent more time gathering all the potential analogs and analyzing each one in more detail. Wymar Germany is only ever mentioned in passing, and instead much more time is spent on either modern day America or the slow slide of Latin American companies into non-democratic systems.
I found that the book devolved a bit too often into bashing trump and modern-day republicans (I get it, they are undermining democracy!) but appreciated the call to action in the last chapter.