Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign undoubtedly inspired a movement of young progressives across America, and few believed in the sprawling idealism more than Ben Rhodes, a young New Yorker who ultimately rose to become Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor. It is this proximity to power, especially during a historic presidency, that makes Rhodes’ second book, After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made, worth considering.  After the Fall centers on an author grappling with a reality—in America and across the world—that has shaken his faith in the “happy democratic endings” he and Obama once held as an ultimate goal. Based on a four-year, cross-continent journey, he explores politics from Russia and Hungary to China and Hong Kong to trace …