The Lost History of the Capitol: 
The Hidden and Tumultuous Saga of Congress and the Capitol Building
By Edward P. Moser
Lyons Press, 2021

On page 344 of his new book The Lost History of the Capitol: The Hidden and Tumultuous Saga of Congress and the Capitol Building, historian Edward Moser mentions that despite a twenty-three-hundred-member force and a half-billion dollar budget, the security forces guarding the US Capitol failed to protect the building during the violent insurrection of January 6, 2021. “The Capitol Riot,” Moser writes, “ranks among the wildest events in the Building’s more than two centuries of existence.” 

He mentions this drastic lack of police preparation many times. “Trump himself,” he writes, “later claimed he requested that thousands of National Guardsmen be on hand for the rally.”

Did Trump actually make that request? No. Does Moser mention that Trump urged his crowd to “fight like hell”? No. Does he mention that as Trump was tweeting that his Vice President Mike Pence had disappointed him, the crowd he sent to the Capitol was chanting “Hang Mike Pence” and brandishing a gibbet? No. Does he mention that Trump for hours ignored pleas for help from his own staff, his own Chief of Staff, and his own family? No. Does he mention the Steele dossier? Yes. 

Given his account of the most serious crisis the Capitol has ever witnessed, should readers trust a single word he writes about anything else in the book? No. 

Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.