In October, at the last meeting of the Jan. 6 Committee, vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney solemnly repeated a point she had been making since that tumultuous day: democratic institutions “only hold when men and women of good faith make them hold regardless of the political cost.” As the Capitol insurrection dramatically illustrated, that is never truer than during presidential transitions, when the nation is at its most fragile. When lawyer and historian David Marchick agreed in 2019 to head the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, he couldn’t have known what was coming. But he knew the zeitgeist: he and his colleagues launched a 48-episode podcast, “Transition Lab,” on the history, memory and policy of presidential transitions. His new book, “The Peaceful Transfer of Power,” draws on that project, collecting oral histories from historians, filmmakers, writers, policy experts and former officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations, exploring the best and worst transitions in U.S. history and suggesting reforms that might improve the process.

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