Democracy Awakening

Critics Review

• A vibrant, and essential history of America’s unending, enraging and utterly compelling struggle since its founding to live up to its own best ideals… It’s both a cause for hope, and a call to arms.

  Jane Mayer, author Dark Money

• With her characteristic powerful prose, Heather Richardson explores the raging (in every sense of the word) political, cultural, and social forces that an elite minority has fostered to divide Americans, erode democracy, and rise to power. By reclaiming this history, she reminds us that democracy is a process, not an endpoint — and that it demands our efforts now, more than ever.

  Joanne Freeman, Professor of History at Yale University and author of Field of Blood

• No one understands the warp and woof of the complicated tapestry that is the United States, no one apprehends the undertow and disparate forces that have directed the tides of American politics, no one forges the connections between then and now better than Heather Cox Richardson does. The result is a cogent, challenging, thoughtful, riveting and beautiful narrative. Brava!

  Ken Burns, Filmmaker

• For the last several turbulent years, millions have looked to Heather Cox Richardson’s daily letters for vital historical perspective, wisdom, and moral clarity. In Democracy Awakening, Richardson goes beyond the news cycle to explain how we got here, placing our current political crisis against the age-old struggle to expand civil rights and economic opportunity. What emerges is a brilliant and honest account of our nation’s past and present. If you care about American democracy-and are engaged in the fight to preserve it-this book is a must-read.

  Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York