About the book
Princeton historian Sean Wilentz reads American political history through two claims. The first is that the nation rests on an egalitarian tradition: Americans at the founding feared that extremes of wealth and poverty would wreck their republican experiment, and that worry has shaped political conflict ever since. The second is that partisanship is permanent and, on balance, good for the country. Wilentz argues that the great egalitarian advances, from the Civil War through the New Deal to the Great Society, came when protest movements converged with party politics led by principled, effective politicians. Abraham Lincoln, W. E. B. Du Bois and Thomas Paine are among the figures who carry the account, which rejects the dream of a post-partisan politics.
Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom, praised it as a major new reading of how egalitarian movements and party politics worked together.
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This book has 1 recommendation
James M. McPherson (Pulitzer Prize Winner & Author of Battle Cry of Freedom)
This stimulating book provides a major new interpretation of the alliance between egalitarian social movements and partisan politics to achieve some of the most notable liberal victories in the American past. Sean Wilentz has done more than anyone else to blend social and political history in a manner that offers powerful new insights.
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