The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels: Jon Meacham: 9780399589812: Amazon.com: Books
Jon Meacham
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The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels Hardcover – May 8, 2018
by Jon Meacham (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars 58 customer reviews
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Appalled by the ascendancy of Donald J. Trump, and shaken by the deadly white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville in 2017, Meacham returns to other moments in our history when fear and division seemed rampant. He wants to remind us that the current political turmoil is not unprecedented, that as a nation we have survived times worse than this. . . . Meacham tries to summon the better angels by looking back at when America truly has been great. He is effective as ever at writing history for a broad readership. . . . [Meacham] is an adroit and appealing storyteller.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America. . . . Meacham, by chronicling the nation’s struggles from revolutionary times to current day, makes the resonant argument that America has faced division before—and not only survived it but thrived. . . . Meacham believes the nation will move beyond Trump because, in the end, as they have shown on vital issues before, Americans embrace their better angels. This book stands as a testament to that choice—a reminder that the country has a history of returning to its core values of freedom and equality after enduring periods of distraction and turmoil.”—Newsday
“Meacham tells us we’ve been here before and can find our way out, urging readers to enter the arena, avoid tribalism, respect facts and listen to history.”—The Washington Post
“This engrossing, edifying, many-voiced chronicle, subtly propelled by concern over the troubled Trump administration, calls on readers to defend democracy, decency, and the common good. Best-selling Meacham’s topic couldn’t be more urgent.”—Booklist(starred review)
“Meacham has become one of America’s most earnest and thoughtful biographers and historians. . . . He employs all of those skills in The Soul of America, a thoroughly researched and smoothly written roundup of some of the worst parts of American history and how they were gradually overcome. . . . Meacham gives readers a long-term perspective on American history and a reason to believe the soul of America is ultimately one of kindness and caring, not rancor and paranoia. Finally, Meacham provides advice to find our better angels—enter the arena, resist tribalism, respect facts and deploy reason, find a critical balance and keep history in mind. He’s provided a great way to do it.”—USA Today
“This is a brilliant, fascinating, timely, and above all profoundly important book. Jon Meacham explores the extremism and racism that have infected our politics, and he draws enlightening lessons from the knowledge that we’ve faced such trials before. We have come through times of fear. We have triumphed over our dark impulses. With compelling narratives of past eras of strife and disenchantment, Meacham offers wisdom for our own time and helps us appreciate the American soul: the heart, the core, and the essence of what it means to have faith in our nation.”—Walter Isaacson
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About the Author
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.See all Editorial Reviews
Product details
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Random House (May 8, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0399589813
ISBN-13: 978-0399589812
Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
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Biography
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, and Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville with his wife and children.
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Customer Reviews
4.6 out of 5 stars
58
4.6 out of 5 stars
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Top customer reviews
Robert L. Moore
5.0 out of 5 starsGood Medicine for Troubled TimesMay 8, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Our current situation might seem dire, but Jon Meacham doesn’t want us to give up just yet. His message in The Soul of America is that we do certainly have reason to be alarmed, but maybe not too alarmed. The demons we face today we have faced before and, more often than not, we have faced them down.
By the “soul” of America, he doesn’t want us to think in terms of a “speculative and gauzy” entity, but rather of “an immanent collection of convictions, dispositions, and sensitivities that shape character and inform conduct…” The soul he presents is not the essence of all things good and noble in America, but a conglomeration of contradictions. “…sometimes the soul’s darker forces win out over the nobler ones.” One on side there is MLK, while on the other there is the KKK. We can’t deny the existence of the latter, but it is the former that we have chosen to celebrate and honor.
And so the battle has gone throughout a number of points in our history where we had to choose between the clenched fist of anger or the open arms of acceptance: the Civil War and Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, the rebirth of the KKK in the 1920s, the paranoia of the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and so on.
Meacham covers these struggles of the American soul largely through the actions of the presidents in whose administrations they occurred, an effective approach given his extraordinary familiarity with the American presidency. It also had the effect for me of forcing me to adjust my evaluations of various presidents. I found myself admiring Eisenhower a little bit less over his tepid reaction to Joseph McCarthy, but liking Harry Truman a great deal more for some of the key decisions he made.
As for our current president, well, Mr. Trump’s style is one of the primary motivations for this book: “I am writing now not because past American presidents have always risen to the occasion but because the incumbent American president so rarely does.”
It’s undeniable, of course, that our “incumbent president” has his enthusiastic supporters, but it’s also undeniable that they are outnumbered by those who look upon the current White House with attitudes ranging from concern to downright horror. And for this less-than-enthusiastic majority, Meacham’s work offers a very encouraging and informative dose of good medicine.
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Casey Wheeler
5.0 out of 5 starsAn Interesting PerspectiveMay 9, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
I received a free Kindle copy of The Soul of America by Jon Meacham courtesy of Net Galley and Random House, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.
I requested this book as I have read a number of books (all biographies) by the author and the description made it very interesting.
Meacham describes accurately this book with the subtitle "The Battle for our Better Angels." The books is about how we as a country have endured and overcome extremeism and racism in the past. Whenever past political leaders have tried to gain ground through fear and blaming other groups (primarily ethic and immigrants) we as a nation have overcome these shortsighted grabs for power.
He uses numerous examples and rather than trying to recreate what was said, uses many direct qoutes from speeches of those involved in providing leadership to overcome the attempts at spreading and feeding fear in the people (in particular specific groups).
I strongly recommend this book for anyone who thinks that we are doomed due the current political atmosphere in our country. We are not and we will surivive and rise above the political spin, social media garbage, sound bite news and real fake news.
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110 people found this helpful
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M. H. Schatzlein
3.0 out of 5 starsNot on a par with the presidential biographiesMay 27, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
I've read all of the author's marvelous presidential biographies, and couldn't imagine giving Jon Meacham anything less than five stars. And maybe I've underrated this one by comparison with them when it really is, and attempts to do, something different. This book seems to be a compilation of short stories and opinion pieces written for periodicals. Its purpose seems to be to show that, even though we've probably not had such a feckless President before, we've gone through divisive times when demagogues appealed to our populist, nativist, and racist worst; the Union has survived and - arguably - even improved over time. This is shorter than the presidential biographies, the prose is more lyrical, and there seem to be more quotations from presidents and those around. The quotes are well selected. The author ends with an appeal for more citizen education and involvement in government, more open-mindedness, and less tribalism. Meacham's biographies invite careful study; I read this book in a day.
7 people found this helpful
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Baxter C Holland
5.0 out of 5 starsA Timely and Critical ReadMay 20, 2018
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase
Too often in difficult and contentious times we fail took back at our own history. However, when we take the time to do that, we find precious little is new, but if we listen to the wisdom of great men and women from the past, there is a way forward.
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