American Struggle - by Jon Meacham (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment.

In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones.

In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation's complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus--sometimes discordant and always fascinating--tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham's singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a "glorious liberty document."

Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.

Review Quotes

"Jon Meacham is our era's preeminent historian of America's values. In this anthology of brilliant essays and important documents, he weaves a narrative of how our democracy has progressed, in fits and starts, in pursuit of a more perfect union. It serves as a guide for the struggle we still face to preserve our freedoms. This is the one book everyone should read to celebrate our 250th birthday."--Walter Isaacson, Professor of History, Tulane University, and New York Times bestselling author of Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Einstein

"With American Struggle, Jon Meacham gives us exactly what we need as we approach the 250th anniversary of the country's founding. The documents presented remind us, in this very difficult time, of the country's sometimes fraught journey toward creating a more perfect union. This volume is inspiring, just at the moment and in the way we need it most."--Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

"Jon Meacham has done it again. This collection of pivotal American documents is all about the contrasts that flow from American pluralism over time, but it is even more about poignancies and conflicts which rise over and over in our history. Here are Hamilton and Jefferson, Calhoun and David Walker; Andrew Jackson and the Seneca Falls Declaration; Frederick Douglass and Andrew Johnson. FDR timelessly takes on "fear" and Huey Long "rich people." Democracy marches in many tongues here but so does authoritarianism, American-style. If there is a soul in American history, it emerges--indeed, explodes--from these pages."--David W. Blight, Yale University, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

About the Author

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush; and His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, he holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.