Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America By Heather Cox Richardson

An interesting and significant history of America's relentless, furious, and utterly fascinating struggle from its inception to preserve its own greatest ideals... It is a cause for hope as well as an exhortation to take action.Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money

Historian and creator of the popular daily newsletter LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN offers an important look at how America, once a beacon of democracy, now teeters on the brink of tyranny and how we could turn back.

Heather Cox Richardson began a daily Facebook post in the midst of the 2019 impeachment crisis, providing background information for the nonstop stream of news. It rapidly turned into a newsletter, and more than two million loyal readers came to rely on her honest and well-informed take on the past and present of America.

Richardson tells an interesting and original tale in Democracy Awakening that illustrates how a few influential people have fought against American ideals throughout time. By spreading a false history and using language as a weapon, they have pushed us closer to dictatorship. They have achieved this by disenfranchising a population and then promising to bring back a fictional past where those people would feel important once again. She argues that remembering the parts of our true history that oppressed Americans have always spoken up for is the first step toward rebuilding our nation. Their steadfast adherence to the principles upon which our nation was founded has in the past enabled us to reaffirm and strengthen our dedication to democracy. Richardson says that the nation's future may be guided by its history.

Richardson has the capacity to weave together our confusing, chaotic, and overpowering stream of news into a coherent story that identifies the important facts, provides background, and suggests possible future paths. Through her characteristic calm prose, she conveys her optimistic and realistic thoughts on the future of democracy. Her mastery of history allows her to move between the Founders, the abolitionists, Reconstruction, Goldwater, and Mitch McConnell with ease. She places particular emphasis on the New Deal's political legacies, the persistence of anti-socialist sentiment, the collapse of the liberal consensus, and the rise of "movement conservatism."

Many books have been written on the events of the last five years.The author of Democracy Awakening examines how we got to be in this dangerous situation, what history really says about us, and what democracy may become in the future.

Dettagli