Breadcrumbs
We’re excited to begin our Spring 2026 series with Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer, Jon Meacham, and celebrate his brilliant and inspiring new work, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union: An Anthology!
In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect. Many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, as well as dark ones.
American Struggle illuminates our nation’s complicated past. Meacham covers a wide spectrum of history from 1619 to the 21st century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of our national experiment.
From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus— sometimes discordant and always fascinating—tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes play out over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, these voices are brilliantly framed by Meacham’s singular commentary, reminding us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to our Constitution.
Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; Meacham’s work demonstrate these tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians.