Jon Grinspan has written an excellent book about true believers, those who, in the words of Eric Hoffer, held a "readiness to die and a proclivity for united action."
Joel Richard Paul’s Indivisible: Daniel Webster and the Birth of American Nationalism seeks to pull from our past different concepts that affect our politics today, particularly populism and nationalism, by telling the story of how “while the Union was falling apart, our American identity was taking place.” He credits New England statesman Daniel Webster as the primary driver of the “national constitutionalism” that helped prop up this identity by serving as “an antidote to Jackson’s toxic populism” and the state-compact version of nationalism espoused by Thomas Jefferson.
Every time you open a newspaper, head to Twitter, or listen to a favorite political podcast or radio show, one issue eventually pops up: democracy, particularly American democracy. For those worried about the future of our democracy or even for those like me, who believe our democratic institutions remain strong, Olivier Zunz s new work, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville, may have arrived just in time. Few have ever had the combination of intellect, wealth, and time to spend most of their life considering the meaning and purpose of democracy like the 19th-century French aristocrat.
Every day, we are inundated with the names of people from the past. When you see an advertisement selling insurance for Lincoln Financial Group, drive down a Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, or read a book review in the Washington Examiner, you see recognizable names that call to mind stories associated with these historical figures. These titles serve as small monuments to their accomplishments and ask us to remember them.
Stephen Marche is an imaginative storyteller who believes the United States will collapse in the “immediate future.” A Canadian offering an outside perspective of our country in crisis, his The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future can best be described as 24 meets The Day After Tomorrow aimed at people who own several pieces of Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorabilia.