Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson
The Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson eBook free download in ePUB/PDF formats or read online in your browser with kindle unlimited ($0.00) for free.
A colorful and crucial history of America’s never-ending, enraging, and totally captivating quest to live up to its own finest values since its birth… It’s both a reason for optimism and a call to arms.
Heather Cox Richardson created a daily Facebook article providing historical context for the daily deluge of news during the 2019 impeachment crisis. It quickly became a newsletter, and its audience grew to more than 2 million devoted readers who rely on her candid and knowledgeable opinion on America’s present and past.
In Democracy Awakening, Richardson weaves a riveting and unique story about how, throughout the years, a small number of wealthy people has waged war on American ideas. They have led us towards authoritarianism by weaponizing language and spreading fake history, creating a dissatisfied population and then offering to restore an imaginary past in which those people could feel significant again. She contends that reclaiming our country begins with recalling the pieces of the country’s genuine history that marginalized Americans have always defended. Their commitment to the ideas that formed this country has allowed us to renew and expand our commitment to democracy in the past. This history, according to Richardson, serves as a road map for the country’s future.
Richardson’s skill is in wrangling our massive, wandering, and perplexing news feed into a coherent story that identifies what we should pay attention to, what precedents exist, and what viable options lay ahead. She is realistic and optimistic about the future of democracy in her signature quiet language. Her command of history allows her to seamlessly transition from the Founders to the abolitionists to Reconstruction to Goldwater to Mitch McConnell, highlighting the New Deal’s political legacies, the lingering fears of socialism, the death of the liberal consensus, and the birth of “movement conservatism.”
Many books describe what has occurred in the last five years. Democracy Awakening reveals how we came to this dangerous position, what our history actually tells us about ourselves, and what democracy’s future can be.
