Summary of Jon Meacham's The Soul of America

By IRB Media

Get the Summary of Jon Meacham's The Soul of America in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book.Original book introduction: Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature" have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history. He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women's rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson's crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear-a struggle that continues even now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638152552

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

Summary

of

Jon Meacham’s

The Soul of America

The Battle for Our Better Angels

Table of Contents

Overview

Key Insights

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Important People

Author’s Style

Author’s Perspective

Overview

Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America (2018) is a historical overview of how US presidents and the people who surrounded them navigated a path through some of the most divisive periods in American history to bring the country together.

The United States today is in a period of deep political division. To make matters worse, President Donald Trump has made a habit of adding rhetorical fire to partisan divisions and exploiting the insecurities of his base of economically disenfranchised rural white people. By considering their nation’s history, Americans may realize the country has faced considerable divisions in the past, but the traditional values and aspirations which unite Americans are greater than the differences which keep them apart. Moreover, history gives Americans examples of past presidents who have worked to carve a path forward for the nation, even during times of mistrust and mass anxiety, by appealing to the nation’s shared values. When presidents failed to be the upstanding moral