Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Politics & government

THE SOUL OF AMERICA

Jon Meacham

The Battle for Our Better Angels

THE SOUL OF AMERICA: The Battle for Our Better Angels is a timely look at tumultuous periods in American history when Presidents and ordinary citizens came together to defeat the forces of fear and hate.

How do we understand this present moment of crisis in American politics? In this new book, Meacham seeks to answer this question by looking back at critical times in history when hope overcame hatred. The current American climate of partisan division is not new, and by exploring past dark moments in the country's history, Meacham shows us how our "better angels" have again and again won the day. He paints revealing portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant; he brings the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Southern "Lost Cause" back to vivid life, as well as Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive movement; Woodrow Wilson and the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the KKK in the 1920's; FDR and the "America First" movement of the 1930's; Truman, Eisenhower, and the reign of Joe McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's fight for civil rights.

John Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning presidential historian and a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, American Gospel, and Franklin and Winston. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Available products
Book Published 2018-05-08 by Random House
Book Published 2018-05-08 by Random House

Comments

Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham's declaration of his faith in America... [He] makes the resonant argument that America has faced division before--and not only survived it but thrived.

Meacham has written this exceptionally fluent and stirring 'portrait of hours in which the politics of fear were prevalent' in America out of profound knowledge, respect, and love for the nation. . . . This engrossing, edifying, many-voiced chronicle, subtly propelled by concern over the troubled Trump administration, calls on readers to defend democracy, decency, and the common good.

Jon Meacham has done it again, this time with a historically rich and gracefully written account of America's long struggle with division in our immigrant nation and the heroic efforts to heal the wounds. It should be in every home and on every student's desk.

This is a brilliant, fascinating, timely, and above all profoundly important book. Jon Meacham explores the extremism and racism that have infected our politics, and he draws enlightening lessons from the knowledge that we've faced such trials before. We have come through times of fear. We have triumphed over our dark impulses. With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time and helps us appreciate the American soul: the heart, the core, and the essence of what it means to have faith in our nation.

In this beautifully written, passionate, and timely work, Jon Meacham provides a much-needed reminder that, from its very beginnings, the United States has struggled to deliver on the promise of the Declaration of Independence and to make our Union "more perfect". Race has often been at the heart of those struggles, and The Soul of America persuasively argues that the resilient spirit of those who fought throughout our history to overcome that seemingly intractable problem is still with us. It is that spirit that gives us cause to be hopeful in the face of doubts about our country's future.

Meacham has become one of America's most earnest and thoughtful biographers and historians... He employs all of those skills in The Soul of America, a thoroughly researched and smoothly written roundup of some of the worst parts of American history and how they were gradually overcome... Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia. Finally, Meacham provides advice to find our better angels -- enter the arena, resist tribalism, respect facts and deploy reason, find a critical balance and keep history in mind. He's provided a great way to do it.

Jon Meacham's THE SOUL OF AMERICA has debuted at #1 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list!

Rather than curse the darkness, Jon Meacham, with his usual eloquence and surpassing knowledge of our history, has offered us all the sublime and calming reassurance that as threatening as so much of the present moment seems, Americans have weathered such storms before and come out on the other side with fresh and progressive horizons. This is a beautifully expressed and convincing prayer to summon our own "better angels" to meet the obvious challenges of today.

Appalled by the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump, and shaken by the deadly white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville in 2017, Meacham returns to other moments in our history when fear and division seemed rampant. He wants to remind us that the current political turmoil is not unprecedented, that as a nation we have survived times worse than this... Meacham tries to summon the better angels by looking back at when America truly has been great.

Check out this great segment with Jon Meacham from his appearance on The View: Jon Meacham on endorsing Biden and new documentary 'The Soul of America'... Read more...

THE SOUL OF AMERICA is the subject of a new HBO MAX Documentary that aired on 10/27/2020.

Meacham tells us we've been here before and can find our way out, urging readers to enter the arena, avoid tribalism, respect facts and listen to history.