Democracy Awakening

The historian's long view of how American democracy has been challenged and reclaimed, written for the readers who start their mornings with her newsletter. Richardson sets the present strain inside the sweep of the national story, the recurring contest between the promise of equality and the forces that have worked to narrow it. The north-star book for the civic-newsletter reader, and the clearest single statement of why the long view steadies the nerve without dulling the alarm.

A historian of the United States whose work traces the long contest between democracy and the forces that have sought to narrow it. Democracy Awakening sets the present moment in the sweep of the national history. How the South Won the Civil War argues that ideas defeated on the battlefield persisted in American politics long after. Her daily newsletter, written for a general readership, has made the historian's long view a part of millions of people's mornings.