Past is prologue in two new books that explore the Trump era

Maggie Haberman's biography Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America has been among the most anticipated accounts of the 45th president's impact on American politics.

Robert Draper's new book on the post-Trump state of Republican politics, Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind, has not had nearly as much attention.

But moving swiftly across timeframes and landscapes, both depict a political world that few Americans could have foreseen less than a decade ago. They also hint at a future many will fear.

Haberman has one subject, a singular actor who has wrought much of the change in the landscape himself. Draper works with an ensemble of characters who are far less familiar, but offer compelling insight into Trump's surprising rise within the Republican Party. Together, they help us understand how Trump has held sway in that party even as