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Loading... The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (2018)| 1,190 | 49 | 16,641 | 
(4.28) | 13 | History.
Politics.
Nonfiction.
HTML: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â?˘ Pulitzer Prizeâ??winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.
/> ONE OF OPRAHâ??S â??BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGHâ?ť â?˘ NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR â?˘ The Christian Science Monitor â?˘ Southern Living
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the â??better angels of our natureâ?ť have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for womenâ??s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnsonâ??s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fearâ??a struggle that continues even now. While the American story has not alwaysâ??or even oftenâ??been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, â??The good news is that we have come through such darkness beforeâ?ťâ??as, time and again, Lincolnâ??s better angels have found a way to prevail.
Praise for The Soul of America â??Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.â?ť â??Walter Isaacson â??Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meachamâ??s declaration of his faith in America.â?ť â??Newsday
â??Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately o … (more) |
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| Epigraph |
History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do.
- James Baldwin  The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That's the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt Nothing makes a man come to grips more directly with his conscience than the Presidency. . . . The burden of his responsibility literally opens up his soul. No longer can he accept matters as given; no longer can he write off hopes and needs as impossible.
 - Lyndon B. Johnson | |
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| Dedication |
To Evan Thomas and Michael Beschloss | |
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(Introduction) The fate of America - or at least of white America, which was the only America that seemed to count - was at stake. Dreams of God and of gold (not necessarily in that order) made America possible. | |
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The emphasis on the presidency in the following pages is not to suggest that occupants of the office are omnipotent. Much of the vibrancy of the American story lies in the courage of the powerless to make the powerful take notice. “One thing I believe profoundly: We make our own history,” Eleanor Roosevelt, who knew much about the possibilities and perils of politics, wrote shortly before her death in 1962 […] [Introduction, p.14 (Random House, 2018)] We are a better nation because of reformers, known and unknown, celebrated and obscure, who have risked and given their lives in the conviction that, as Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” This is not sentimental. “Surely in the light of history,” Mrs. Roosevelt remarked, “it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.”[Introduction, p.14 (Random House, 2018)] The engines of prosperity propelled millions into the broad middle class – an economic, cultural, and political ethos in which these millions of people had a stake in the present and the future of the nation. “Of the three classes,” Euripides had written, “it is the middle that saves the country.” […] To Walt Whitman, “The most valuable class in any community is the middle class.” [Chapter 6, p.179 (Random House, 2018)] As long ago as the American Founding, it was an accepted truth that an economic unit that was neither very rich nor very poor offered a republic vital stability. Definitions of middle class are elusive and elastic. The scholar Ganesh Sitaraman holds with the one offered by the Economist magazine […] “to be middle class […] means that you have enough spending money to provide for yourself and your family without living hand to mouth, but not enough to guarantee their future.” Nothing, in other words, can be taken for granted, for there's always the risk that your prosperity might fall victim to time and chance. [Chapter 6, p.180 (Random House, 2018)] Whatever one's status, there is a tendency for many to think that they're a Horatio Alger hero – an emblem of rugged individualism and singular success. The American ideal of what Henry Clay had called “self-made men” in 1832 is so central to the national mythology that there's often a missing character in the story Americans like to tell about American prosperity: government, which frequently helped create the conditions for the making of those men.
Many Americans have never liked acknowledging that the public sector has always been integral to making the private sector successful. We often approve of government's role when we benefit from it and disapprove when others seem to be getting something we aren't. [Chapter 6, p.180 (Random House, 2018)] Then, while [World War II] was still underway, the GI Bill of Rights, formally called the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, would help lift millions into previously unreachable economic and cultural spheres.
It is not a coincidence that it was a prosperous white America, which, in the mid-1960s became more open, however belatedly and reluctantly and incompletely, to people of color, women, and immigrants. […] A sense of comfort and of economic security helped create a climate of hope – and that sense of comfort and of economic security was the result of public and private investment in a broad range of Americans.[Chapter 6, p.181 (Random House, 2018)] In an iconic moment, the counsel for the Army, Joseph N. Welsh, attacked the senator who had clumsily tried to impugn the loyalty of a young lawyer on Welch's team. “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,” Welch told McCarthy. “Little did I dream that you would be so reckless and cruel as to do an injury to that lad … I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would. I like to think that I am a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”
McCarthy blundered forward and took up the theme again. Welsh was ready and struck with force. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator,” Welsh said. “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” [Chapter 6, p.201 (Random House, 2018)] Like McCarthy, right-wing figures such as the John Birch Society's Robert Welch cast Eisenhower in the role of villain. The old general's moderate domestic views and pragmatic foreign policy made him anathema to conservatives who, longing for a crusader, instead found themselves living with a conciliator. [Chapter 6, p.203 (Random House, 2018)] As a Southerner in a Democratic Party divided between liberals based in the Northeast and segregationists in the Old Confederacy, Johnson faced the worst of all political worlds on civil rights. Yet he knew, too, that this was a task for the ages – a task for great and good men, who if they overcame the tyranny of the present, would bask in the warm light of history. As Johnson gathered himself to press ahead with the Kennedy administration's civil rights legislation – in his first address to Congress as president, LBJ would frame the fight as the most fitting possible tribute to JFK – he was advised to go slow and play it safe, at least until after the 1964 presidential election. As political man as ever drew breath, Johnson, however dismissed such counsel with a penetrating rhetorical question: “Well, what the hell is the presidency for?” he asked, if not to do the big things lesser men might not? [Chapter 7, p.212 (Random House, 2018)] [...]Wednesday, August 23, 1963 at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
King's address to the march that afternoon was not going well, or at least not as well as he hoped. […] King was on the verge of letting the hour pass him by.
King had already begun to extemporize when the singer Mahalia Jackson spoke up. “Tell 'em about the dream, Martin,” said Jackson who was standing near by. King left his text altogether at this point – a departure that put him on the path to speaking words of American scripture, words as essential to the nation's destiny in their way, as those of Lincoln before whose monument Lincoln stood, and those of Jefferson whose monument lay to the preacher's right, toward the Potomac. The moments of ensuing oratory lifted King above the tumult of history and made him a figure of history – a “new founding father,” in Taylor Branch's apt phrase.[Chapter 7, p.224-225 (Random House, 2018)] The movement was about much more than King, but it's a recurring fact of history that human beings seek apostles who embody widely shared creed. And in the battle against Jim Crow and for economic justice in the 1950s and '60s, King was that apostle, and he will be a source of fascination and veneration as long as the American story is told. [Chapter 7, p.246-247 (Random House, 2018)] “You never can tell what's going to happen to a man until he gets in a place of responsibility,” Truman observed. “You just can't tell in advance […] You've just got to pick the man you think is best on the basis of his past history and the views he expresses on present events and situations […]”
You just can't tell. Sobering words, but we still have to try, or else the whole democratic enterprise becomes even less intelligible than it already is. History – which is all we have to go on – suggest that a president's vices and his virtues matter enormously, for politics is a human, not a clinical, undertaking. So, too, do the vices and virtues of the people at large, for leadership is the art of the possible, and possibility is determined by whether generosity can triumph over selfishness in the American soul. [Conclusion, p.257-258 (Random House, 2018)] Every generation tends to think of itself as uniquely challenged and under siege. The questions of the present assume outsize and urgent importance, for they are, after all, the questions that shape and suffuse the lives of those living in the moment. Humankind seems to be forever coping with crisis. Strike the “seems”: Humankind is forever coping with crisis, or believes it is, and will until what William Faulkner described as “the last red and dying evening.”
We have mamaged, however, to survive the crises and vicissitudes of history. Our brightest hours are never as bright as we like to think; our glummest moments are rarely as irredeemable as they feel at the time. How then, in an hour of anxiety about the future of the country, at a time when a president appears to be determined to undermine the rule of law, a free press, and the sense of hope essential to American life, can those with a sense of deep concern about the nation's future enlist on the side of the angels?[...]
ENTER THE ARENA
The battle begins with political engagement itself. Theodore Roosevelt put it best: “The first duty of an American citizen is that he shall work in politics; his second duty is that he shall do that work in a practical manner; and his third is that it shall be done in accord with the highest principles of honor and justice. [Conclusion, p.266 (Random House, 2018)] RESIST TRIBALISM
Engagement, especially at a time of heightened conflicts, has its perils. Those motivated by what they see as extremism on the other side are likely to view politics not as a mediation of differences, but as total warfare where no quarter can be given. The country works best, however, when we resist such tribal inclinations. “We know instinctively,” Jane Addams wrote, “that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.” [Conclusion, p.267 (Random House, 2018)] RESPECT FACTS AND DEPLOY REASON
There is such a thing as discernible reality. Facts, as John Adams once said, are stubborn things, yet too many Americans are locked into their particular vision of the world, choosing this view or that perspective based not on its grounding in fact but on whether it's a view or perspective endorsed by the leaders one follows. “The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, why, people will believe it,” Truman wrote. “Well, if you tell the truth often enough they'll believe it and go along with you.” To reflexively resist one side or the other without weighing the merits of s given issue is all too common [...] Of course it may be that you believe the other side is wrong, but at least take a minute to be sure. To expect to get everything you want simply because you want it is to invite frustration. Reform is slow work, and it is neither for the fainthearted nor the impatient. [Conclusion, p.268 (Random House, 2018)] FIND A CRITICAL BALANCE
”Wherever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Jefferson wrote in 1789, adding: “Whenever things get so wrong as to attract their notice they may be relied on to set them to rights.” Being informed is more than knowing details and arguments. It also means being humble enough to recognize that only on the rarest of occasions is does any single camp have a monopoly on virtue or on wisdom. [Conclusion, p.269 (Random House, 2018)] KEEP HISTORY IN MIND
[...] The past and the present, too, tell us that demagogues can only thrive when a substantial portion of the demos – the people – want him to. In The American Commonwealth, James Bryce warned of the dangers of a renegade president. Bryce's view was not that the individual himself, from the White House, could overthrow the Constitution. Disaster would come, Bryce believed, at the hands of a demagogic president with an enthusiastic public base. […] “He might be a tyrant not against the masses, but with the masses.” The cheering news is that hope is not lost. “The people have often made mistakes,” Harry Truman said, 'but given time and the facts, they will make the corrections.” [Conclusion, p.270-271 (Random House, 2018)] Lincoln, who gave us the image of our better angels, should have the last word. […] “It is,” he said, “in order that each of you may have through this free government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence: that you may have equal privileges in the race of life with all it's desirable human aspirations – it is for this that the struggle should be maintained, that we should not lose our birthrights […] “The nation is worth fighting for to secure such an inestimable jewel.” [Conclusion, p.271-272 (Random House, 2018)] For all of our darker impulses, for all of our shortcomings, and for all the dreams denied and deferred, the experiment begun so long ago, carried out so imperfectly, is worth the fight. There is in fact, no struggle more important and none nobler, than the one we wage in the service of those better angels who, however besieged, are always ready for battle. [Conclusion, p.272 (Random House, 2018)] | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English
None ▾Book descriptions History.
Politics.
Nonfiction.
HTML:#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER â?˘ Pulitzer Prizeâ??winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.
ONE OF OPRAHâ??S â??BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGHâ?ť â?˘ NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR â?˘ The Christian Science Monitor â?˘ Southern Living
Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the â??better angels of our natureâ?ť have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for womenâ??s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnsonâ??s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fearâ??a struggle that continues even now.
While the American story has not alwaysâ??or even oftenâ??been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, â??The good news is that we have come through such darkness beforeâ?ťâ??as, time and again, Lincolnâ??s better angels have found a way to prevail.
Praise for The Soul of America
â??Brilliant, fascinating, timely . . . With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time.â?ťâ??Walter Isaacson
â??Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meachamâ??s declaration of his faith in America.â?ťâ??Newsday
â??Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately o ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
Contents:
To Hope Rather than to Fear -- The Confidence of the Whole People: Visions of the Presidency, the Ideas of Progress and Prosperity, and "We, the People" -- The Long Shadow of Appomattox: The Lost Cause, the Ku Klux Klan, and Reconstruction -- With Soul of Flame and Temper of Steel: "The Melting Pot," TR and His "Bully Pulpit," and the Progressive Promise -- A New and Good Thing in the World: The Triumph of Women's Suffrage, the Red Scare, and a New Klan -- The Crisis of the Old Order: The Great Depression, Huey Long, the New Deal, and America First -- Have You No Sense of Decency?: "Making Everyone Middle Class," the GI Bill, McCarthyism, and Modern Media -- What the Hell is the Presidency For?: "Segregation Forever," King's Crusade, and LBJ in the Crucible -- The First Duty of an American Citizen. | |
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(Available in Print: COPYRIGHT: 5/8/2018; PUBLISHER: Random House; 1st edition; ISBN: 978-0399589812; PAGES: 416; Unabridged.)
(Digital: Yes)
*Audiobook: COPYRIGHT: 5/10/2018; PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group; ISBN: 978-0525640066; DURATION: 11:01:34; Unabridged
(Film or tv: No.)
SERIES:
No
MAJOR CHARACTERS:
N/A
SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: It was either a news show that recommended it, or an article I read.
What it’s about: Meachum discusses politics and the office of the US President, touching on historical events and the efforts, of politicians to enact legislation for or counter to the promise of the constitutional promise of liberty and justice for all citizens. He points out that leaders reflect the will and collective soul of those they lead, and that for the many steps backward, the trend is ever, on the whole---over time, forward and upward.
What I thought: Nicely researched and written. Inspiring.
AUTHOR:
Jon Meachum (5/20/1969):
From Amazon: “Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville with his wife and children.”
NARRATOR:
Fred Sanders
From Penguin Random House:
“Fred Sanders has been seen on Broadway (The Buddy Holly Story), in national tours (Driving Miss Daisy and Big River), and on TV, including Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs, Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. A native New Yorker and Yale graduate, he now lives in LA.”
I feel that typically most authors DO need to let professional actors narrate their works, but I don’t find any flaws in the author’s Intro or conclusion. Never the less, Fred Sanders does a marvelous narration here.
GENRE:
Non-fiction; Biography; US History;
LOCATIONS:
United States
TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (2018)
SUBJECTS:
Politics; Civil Rights; Presidency
SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From the Introduction – To Hope Rather Than To Fear
"There is a rich history of discussion of what the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, writing in 1944, called the American Creed: devotion to principles of liberty, of self-government, and of equal opportunity for all regardless of race, gender, religion, or nation of origin. Echoing Myrdal, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., wrote, “The genius of America lies in its capacity to forge a single nation from peoples of remarkably diverse racial, religious, and ethnic origins….The American Creed envisages a nation composed of individuals making their own choices and accountable to themselves, not a nation based on inviolable ethnic communities….It is what all Americans should learn, because it is what binds all Americans together.”
I have chosen to consider the American soul more than the American Creed because there is a significant difference between professing adherence to a set of beliefs and acting upon them. The war between the ideal and the real, between what’s right and what’s convenient, between the larger good and personal interest is the contest that unfolds in the soul of every American. The creed of which Myrdal and Schlesinger and others have long spoken can find concrete expression only once individuals in the arena choose to side with the angels. That is a decision that must come from the soul—and sometimes the soul’s darker forces win out over its nobler ones. The message of Martin Luther King, Jr.—that we should be judged on the content of our character, not on the color of our skin—dwells in the American soul; so does the menace of the Ku Klux Klan. History hangs precariously in the balance between such extremes. Our fate is contingent upon which element—that of hope or that of fear—emerges triumphant.
Philosophically speaking, the soul is the vital center, the core, the heart, the essence of life. Heroes and martyrs have such a vital center; so do killers and haters. Socrates believed the soul was nothing less than the animating force of reality. “What is it that, present in a body, makes it living?” he asked in the Phaedo. The answer was brief, and epochal: “A soul.” In the second chapter of the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, the soul was life itself: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” In the Greek New Testament, when Jesus says “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” the word for “life” could also be translated as “soul.””
RATING:
5 stars.
STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
7-9-2022 to 7-28-2022 (