American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions - Hardcover

Lemann, Nicholas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1598536621 ISBN 13: 9781598536621

Publisher: Library Of America, 2020

Synopsis

From The Federalist to Citizens United, bestselling author Nicholas Lemann presents key writings on five crucial questions confronting American democracy today. Amid the frenzied overload of 24-hour cable news and incessant social media, at a time when many of us fear for the future of our democracy, it is becoming harder and harder to think clearly about politics. American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions provides an alternative for those who want to step back and look to the past for inspiration and guidance. Edited with perceptive and provocative commentary by bestselling historian and journalist Nicholas Lemann (The Promised Land, Transaction Man), the book presents key writings from the American past that speak to five contemporary flashpoints in our political landscape: race, gender, immigration, and citizenship; opportunity and inequality; the purpose and powers of the federal government; money, special privilege, and corruption; and protest and civil disobedience. Some of the selections are well-known - George Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Frederick Douglass's 'What to the Slave is the 4th of July,' Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham Jail - while others will be new to many readers - Horace Mann argument for public schools as a means of fighting inequality, Jane Addams's perceptive analysis of gender and social class in charity work, Randolph Bourne envisioning a 'Trans-National America.' American Democracy presents a remarkable range of insightful and eloquent American political writing, while serving as an invaluable resource for concerned citizens who wish to become better-informed participants in the ongoing drama of our democracy.

About this title

About the Author

Nicholas Lemann is Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor and Dean Emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and the author of The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1991), The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999), Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006), and Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream (2019). He has been a writer and editor at Washington Monthly, Texas Monthly, and the Washington Post, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, and, since 1999, a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There has never been a time when American democracy was in perfect shape. There have been times when that was the perception, at least of people at the top of the society, but in historical perspective those moments look like examples of willful blindness—to slavery and segregation, to the denial of rights to women, to unacceptable conditions for the poor and vulnerable, and to many other woes. It is essential always to allow for multiple and conflicting perspectives on the health of our democracy. Many of the selections in this book were written by outsiders who were motivated by their exclusion from the system.

This is our country. To be an American citizen is to bear a personal responsibility for improving American democracy. Everyone can do something. In deciding what to do, history helps. This book should serve as a spur to political reflection and action. The themes highlighted here—citizenship, equality, governance, money in politics, and protest—are long-running, essential flash points in American democracy, sources of vital debate, conflict, and creativity. They will still be flash points well into the future. The stakes are too high, and our opinions too varied, for any of them easily to be put to rest. Although the authors of the selections here are major historical figures, readers have a real commonality with them. All of them participated actively in American democracy. All of us can too.

Edition details

• Publisher: Library Of America
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1598536621
• ISBN 13: 9781598536621
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 300