American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions
By Nicholas Lemann
American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions presents key writings from the American past that speak to five contemporary flashpoints in our political landscape: race, gender, immigration, and citizenship; opportunity and inequality; the purpose and powers of the federal government; money, special privilege, and corruption; and protest and civil disobedience. Some of the selections are well-known--George Washington's letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Frederick Douglass's "What to the Slave is the 4th of July," Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from Birmingham Jail--while others will be new to many readers--Horace Mann argument for public schools as a means of fighting inequality, Jane Addams's perceptive analysis of gender and social class in charity work, Randolph Bourne envisioning a "Trans-National America."
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