American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions

by Nicholas Lemann (Editor)

Overview

From The Federalist to Citizens United, a bestselling historian 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’s 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781598536621
Publisher:	Library of America
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Pages:	300
Sales rank:	629,088
Product dimensions:	5.09(w) x 8.15(h) x 0.84(d)

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.

Read an Excerpt

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction Nicholas Lemann xi

Question 1 Citizenship: Who Are "We the People"? 1

George Washington to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport Rhode Island 7

Frederick Douglass: from What to the Slave is the 4th of July? 9

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Solitude of Self 16

Henry Cabot Lodge: Speech in the Senate on Immigration 28

Randolph S. Bourne: Trans-National America 48

Question 2 Equality: How Can It Be Achieved? 69

Horace Mann: from Twelfth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education 75

Abraham Lincoln: Speech to the 166th Ohio Regiment 83

Jane Addams: from The Subtle Problems of Charity 84

W.E.B. Du Bois: from Black Reconstruction 97

Question 3 A More Perfect Union: What Is the Government For? 109

James Madison: The Federalist No. 51 119

John Marshall: from Opinion for the Court in McCulloch v. Maryland 125

Alexis de Tocqueville: from Democracy in America 134

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address to the Commonwealth Club of California 142

Paul Nitze et al.: from NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security 157

Question 4 The Power of Money: How to Control It? 169

Andrew Jackson: from Veto of the Bank Charter 177

Carl Schurz: from Address on Civil Service Reform 182

Theodore Roosevelt: The New Nationalism 190

John Paul Stevens: from Dissent in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 208

Question 5 Protest: Can We Disobey the Law? 221

Henry David Thoreau: from Civil Disobedience 227

Martin Luther King, Jr.: Letter from Birmingham Jail 243

Hannah Arendt: from Civil Disobedience 263

Sources and Acknowledgments 277

Editorial Reviews

08/24/2020

“Nearly all the essential aspects of our democracy have been in dispute from the very beginning,” writes journalist Lemann (Transaction Man) in this edifying survey of American political history. Seeking insights on the topics of citizenship, equality, the purpose of government, the influence of money on politics, and the efficacy of protest, Lemann collects writings from a diverse array of lawmakers, activists, judges, founding fathers, philosophers, and presidents. The section on citizenship, for example, includes George Washington’s 1790 letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I.; an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the 4th of July?”; suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s last public speech; Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s 1896 call for immigration restrictions; and progressive writer Randolph S. Bourne’s WWI-era argument for a multicultural America. Lemann draws incisive links to present-day debates and provides useful historical context in introductions to each section, though readers may wish for editorial notes in the selections themselves (explaining, for instance, the work of immigration rights activist Mary Antin, whom Bourne references in his essay). Still, this illuminating and well-conceived anthology offers essential insights into how debates over the nature and practice of American democracy have evolved. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

This illuminating and well-conceived anthology offers essential insights into how debates over the nature and practice of American democracy have evolved.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2020-07-14
The New Yorker staff writer and journalism professor gathers historical texts he hopes will “serve as a spur to political reflection and action” on enduring problems of American democracy.

Lemann argues that democracy isn’t an outcome but a process—and one that was contentious from the beginning—so it makes more sense to refine it than to pine for a lost halcyon era. Toward that end, his anthology rounds up 21 texts produced over more than 200 years and divided thematically into five sections on “citizenship, equality, governance, money in politics, and protest,” each of which deals with an issue that remains pertinent, such as racial injustice, immigration reform, or nuclear proliferation. Most contributors are well-known historical figures who represent diverse perspectives on democracy: Jane Addams, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Henry Cabot Lodge, James Madison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Alexis de Tocqueville, and George Washington. The book as a whole, however, is slanted toward the liberal end of the spectrum. Lemann offers an excerpt from Justice John Paul Stevens’ dissent in the Citizens United case without the counterweight of a concurring opinion from a more conservative jurist, and he makes his anti-Trump stance clear on the first page, which faults the president for “spending money without congressional approval, selectively enforcing immigration laws, undermining the independence of federal agencies and unilaterally ordering assassinations overseas, even of American citizens.” That uneasy mix of ageless texts and pointed topical commentary makes it difficult to envision a broad readership for this anthology. The book should find a natural home in lower-level college courses on American democracy, but the 2020 presidential election could make some of the material sound dated. Oddly enough, Lemann leaves the impression that he would love to have to revise parts of his work before the metaphorical ink has dried on the first edition.

A solid, left-leaning collection of pieces by thought leaders of yesteryear on how democracy works—or doesn’t.

Kirkus Reviews