Back American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions

American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions

From The Federalist to Citizens United, best-selling author Nicholas Lemann presents key writings on five crucial questions confronting American democracy today More

Edited by Nicholas Lemann

Overview
News & Views
Table of Contents
Contributors

Overview

Interviews Olivier Zunz on Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Man Who Understood Democracy”
July 14, 2022

Interviews Nicholas Lemann: Challenges to American democracy are “ever-present”
February 24, 2021

Video American Democracy: The Task Before Us
February 19, 2021

At a time when the frenzied overload of 24-hour news and social media has made it difficult to think clearly about politics and the future of our democracy, this concise volume invites readers to step back and turn to American history for guidance and inspiration. Edited with perceptive commentary by acclaimed historian and journalist Nicholas Lemann, these 21 key writings from the nation’s past speak to 5 fundamental flashpoints in our political landscape: the boundaries of citizenship; the problem of inequality; the purpose and powers of the federal government; the sway of money and special privilege; and the place of protest and civil disobedience.

Some selections are well-known touchstones— George Washington’s message 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.” Others will be new to many readers—Horace Mann’s argument for public schools as a means of fighting inequality, Jane Addams’s incisive analysis of social class and cultural conflict, Randolph S. Bourne’s bold vision of a “Trans-National America.” Offering crucial context for current events, this collection of insightful and eloquent American political writing is an essential resource for anyone who wishes to be a better-informed participant in the ongoing drama of American democracy.

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.

This special publication features full-cloth binding, acid-free paper, and a unique design with specifications differing from those of Library of America series titles.
News & Views

Interviews Olivier Zunz on Alexis de Tocqueville, “The Man Who Understood Democracy”
July 14, 2022

Interviews Nicholas Lemann: Challenges to American democracy are “ever-present”
February 24, 2021

Video American Democracy: The Task Before Us
February 19, 2021

News Nicholas Lemann: What a functioning democracy would look like
October 27, 2020
Table of Contents

Introduction by Nicholas Lemann

QUESTION 1: Citizenship: Who Are “We the People”?
George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island
Frederick Douglass: from What to the Slave is the 4th of July?
Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Solitude of Self
Henry Cabot Lodge: Speech in the Senate on Immigration
Randolph S. Bourne: Trans-National America

QUESTION 2: Equality: How Can It Be Achieved?
Horace Mann: from Twelfth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education
Abraham Lincoln: Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment
Jane Addams: from The Subtle Problems of Charity
W.E.B. Du Bois: from Black Reconstruction

QUESTION 3: A More Perfect Union: What Is the Government For?
James Madison: The Federalist No. 51
John Marshall: from Opinion for the Court in McCulloch v. Maryland
Alexis de Tocqueville: from Democracy in America
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address to the Commonwealth Club of California
Paul Nitze et al.: from NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security

QUESTION 4: The Power of Money: How to Control It?
Andrew Jackson: from Veto of the Bank Charter
Carl Schurz: from Address on Civil Service Reform
Theodore Roosevelt: The New Nationalism
John Paul Stevens: from Dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

QUESTION 5: Protest: Can We Disobey the Law?
Henry David Thoreau: from Civil Disobedience
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail
Hannah Arendt: from Civil Disobedience .
Contributors

Jane Addams
Hannah Arendt
Randolph S. Bourne
Frederick Douglass
W.E.B. Du Bois
Andrew Jackson
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
Henry Cabot Lodge
James Madison
Horace Mann
John Marshall
Paul Nitze et al.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Carl Schurz
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
John Paul Stevens
Henry David Thoreau
Alexis de Tocqueville
George Washington

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ISBN: 978-1-59853-662-1 299 pages

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