“The book masterfully shows why interviews with presidential candidates on broadcast late-night talk shows are so entertaining what is so political about them. With a surgical scalper, Dori-Hacohen, Grimshaw, and Reijven reveal the structure and mechanism of ‘the entertainment-political interviews’, convincingly connecting between micro-level discursive phenomena and macro-level democratic mythologies and political trends. A must-read contribution to communication, media, and political scholars.”

Zohar Kampf, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

“Politicians at Night subjects politicians’ appearances on late night political talk shows on U.S. network television to rigorous discourse analysis and biting cultural critique. The authors’ argument could not be clearer: these appearances are no more, and no less, than appearances, constituted through strategically deployed discursive devices for the dual purpose of entertainment and sustaining a semblance of democratic co-participation among hosts, politicians, and views. The book is a valuable contribution to scholarship on the doing and undoing of democracy in the United States.”

David Boromisza-Habashi, University of Colorado Boulder

“Using details of language and interaction, the authors exhaustively demonstrate that politics are not merely brought into entertainment contexts, but political figures and situations themselves become sources of entertainment in this genre of talk show. This book elevates the analysis of entertainment and politics beyond politics as personal and conversational, and in the process reveals something more insidious at the heart of how humor is used to mythologize US politics and rob political life of serious engagement.”

Jessica Robles, Loughborough University