Will I love Democracy Awakening?

I was most interested in Richardson's tracing of the mid-20th century origins, attacks on, and eventual fracturing of the "liberal consensus" in mainstream American politics.

With things being so chaotic politically these days, it feels more and more difficult to know who to trust and believe. Richardson is an intelligent and thoughtful historian that writes a very accessible narrative. She gives the backstory, explains the details, but connects the dots in a reliable way. It kept me turning pages to the end, but I'm also so happy to own it - I return often to re-ground myself and compare her telling with that of others.

This book is about recent American history. Like most people, I tend to depend upon my own memory of recent events and press coverage of those events. Heather Cox Richardson puts them all in larger context and tracks trends through history from much earlier origins. When I took a university course on the History of World War II over 60 years ago, I discovered that many (perhaps most) historians then thought that historical subjects that had occurred within living memory were not appropriate for historians to write. My professor proved them wrong on this point. I still have the textbook,… show more.

Heather Richardson is one of our best historians. I love her brilliance, and I love that she knows the material well enough to explain it simply to the novice.

I read her previous book, and this next one didn't disappoint. If I could only read one book on how the USA has come to this, Democracy Awakening would be it. I recommend it for anyone who would finally like to try democracy in a USA where race no longer predicts outcomes!