The Soul of America

Jon Meacham looks back at moments in American history when hope overcame division and fear, arguing that the partisan fury of the present is not new. He draws portraits of presidents from Lincoln, Grant and Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson, alongside citizens such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Alice Paul and Eleanor Roosevelt. His turning points include Reconstruction and the Lost Cause, the Klan's 1920s revival, women's suffrage, Huey Long and Father Coughlin, the McCarthy witch-hunts and Johnson's campaign against Jim Crow. It entered the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list at number one.

Walter Isaacson praised it as fascinating, timely and, above all, deeply important.