The Soul of America- The Battle for Our Better Angels by Jon Meacham
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Web ID: 8513827Shows the struggle of American history to today
Do you think America has never seen such polarizing times as ours today? Pulitizer Prize winner Jon Meacham stands ready to correct you and then to enlist you in the struggle for America to choose the better path. In this work, starting with Abraham Lincoln, he traces how historically Americans fought over choices that today might seem taken for granted – like women’s suffrage, lynchings, the right to vote, and trumped-up charges of political treason. In so doing, he paints a vivid history of American progress and inspires us to continue in that vein today.
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The Soul of America
I’m almost finished reading this wonderful. So appropriate for these times. It is giving me hope for the future of our democracy
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A Relevant look for today's troubling times
The Soul of America is true to its subtitle: "The Battle for Our Better Angels. Meacham tells his story of America by reporting critical times in American History. The introduction begins with an autumn evening of Thursday, October 7, 1948 opposite a picture of President John F. Kennedy, standing in the Oval Office leaning on a table with his head down as if in prayer. The subject at hand was Harry S. Truman's civil rights program, one that included anti-lynching legislation and protections against racial discrimination in hiring. But the book peers into America's continued mission to form a "more perfect union" from its beginning days, to he efforts by women to achieve suffrage, to modern times when our struggle to perfect our country has just found President Trump to be the first President to have been impeached twice, the second time only days before President Elect Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris are to be sworn in as President and Vice President of the United States. From the beginning, Meachem tells the reader how the people of this country have struggled against the dark side of human nature to deliver on the "promise of the Declaration of Independence," and over time overcoming our faults to form a more perfect union. I found the book interesting and rewarding in its even handed history of our history of liberty, and the freedom to achieve greatness even as we overcame the scourges including the killing of American Indians and the slavery, a custom imported with the African Americans who were captured to serve their masters in the new world. This unvarnished history at first saddened me for the injustices committed in the name of progress but then filled my heart with greater appreciation of a people so committed to the nation's founding principles that through time they have continued he struggle to form a more perfect union with liberty and justice for all.
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Contradiction of self
History is very important but we rarely seem to learn from it. Jon Meacham's actions contradict what he says he is and believes.
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Highly Recommend a Read.
The book is one I bought back in February but finally got a chance to read. I found the themes quite timely and apropos with the current social atmosphere we find ourselves in. It’s interesting to see how some of these great leaders handled the social needs of the country with the political demand of being President.
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