Book
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The nation that never was : reconstructing America's story
Publication Information
Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Physical Description
250 pages ; 24 cm
Summary
"One standard story about America is rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Another story concerns America's moment of reckoning after the Civil War, when it was possible to believe that the country would transcend its racist roots. Kermit Roosevelt III argues here that today, with the country increasingly riven along violent divides, we can find a path forward by shifting our benchmarks from the first story, which fostered the Confederacy, to the second. America doesn't need to find a new usable past; it already has one: we don't live in the Founders' America-we live in Lincoln's"--
Contents
- Stories of America
- Questioning the standard story : dissenters
- The exclusive Declaration
- The ambiguous Revolution
- The geostrategic Constitution
- The story of continuity
- The march of the Declaration
- Why we tell the standard story
- Why we shouldn't tell the standard story
- Magic tricks and revolutions
- Why, how, and who we are
- Redemption songs : inclusive equality and exclusive individualism in modern America
- The better story.