Six books to help understand the United States and its politics

Bloomsbury Press, University of California Press, WW Norton & Company

(Credit: Bloomsbury Press, University of California Press, WW Norton & Company)

From the pursuit of happiness to economics as the election approaches, here are some books that offer context, insight, and perspectives on the United States.

As the 2024 US presidential election approaches, it appears that people disagree on many issues. To help you understand the differences of opinion, consider the following six books, which provide detailed analyzes of the issues and their context. The books cover everything from the Declaration of Independence and changes in conservative politics beginning in the Reagan era to the cultural foundations of the United States. Added to this are the opioid drug epidemic, triggered in 1996 by the marketing of the prescription painkiller Oxycontin, and the economy, amid concerns about the cost of living. Will the United States be able to achieve a sense of “We the People” despite disagreements? This is the question that will have to be answered between now and the elections on November 5.

These Truths A History of the United States by Jill Lepore (2018)

Harvard history professor and New Yorker contributor Jill Lepore takes the title of her comprehensive and gripping history of the United States from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold it to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator. with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Spanning the 16th century through 2018, the book is “the story of a nation, multiracial at its founding, and of those who sought ways to realize 'these truths,'” writes John S. Gardner in The Guardian . “No country before or since has been so racked by conflict and wealth,” writes Andrew Sullivan in the New York Times Book Review. “No country has ever been defined as a land of strangers and travelers, where waves and waves of immigration constantly passed through society. No people were so passionate about both slavery and freedom.” These truths are the perfect civics book for these times. It is not a story of “relentless progress,” notes the New York Times Best Books of 2018, “but of conflict and contradiction, with crosscurrents of reason and faith, of black and white, of immigrants and natives, industry and agriculture which reverberate through a story. it's far from over.

Reaganland: America's Rightward Shift 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein (2020)

The final of four volumes in Pearlstein's chronicle of the rise of conservatism in the United States is a colorful narrative history. Perlstein begins with the Gerald Ford/Jimmy Carter presidential campaign. Reagan, an unsuccessful primary candidate, refused to help Ford, setting the stage for his own successful campaign against Carter four years later. “It's all there, the Equal Rights Amendment Bill, Brother Billy, the Panama Canal Treaty, California Proposition 13 cutting property taxes, supply-side economics, the ' killer rabbit', direct mail, the Ford Pinto, Ted Kennedy, Three Mile Island, the malaise and a hundred other incidents and stories that defined those tumultuous years,” writes John S. Gardner in The Guardian. Reaganland “is essentially a sociopolitical history, focusing on the movements and causes that have animated public debate so virulently and on the impacts of major social changes, such as women's rights, on American life.” Follow it with Max Boot's new biography Reagan, which focuses on Reagan's ties to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of the American Political Crisis by James Davison Hunter (2024)

In Culture Wars (1991), Hunter coined the term that describes the divide between two opposing forces in the United States. “Democracy in America is in crisis,” he writes in Democracy and Solidarity, his new book. It examines American political culture over two and a half centuries and identifies the cultural roots of the crisis: the promise that all are created equal, as opposed to the practice of excluding large swaths of humanity. “Hunter is the nation’s leading cultural historian,” writes David Brooks in the New York Times. “It reminds us that the political life of a nation rests on cultural foundations. Each society has its own way of seeing the world, its own basic assumptions about what is right and wrong, its own vision of a better world which gives direction and purpose to national life. American culture, which often achieves solidarity through opposition to a common enemy or affirmation of common purpose, has “collapsed to its deepest levels,” Hunter writes.

(Credit: Regnery Gateway, Yale University Press, Simon & Schuster)

Freedom and Sexuality by David J Garrow (1998)

In June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision which granted women the constitutional right to abortion, based on the right to privacy implied in the 14th Amendment. The action sparked an avalanche of state bills aimed at banning abortion, as well as parallel protests and actions aimed at restoring eggs. In Garrow's landmark legal story, he begins with a 40-year fight to repeal Connecticut's law banning birth control. It thoroughly covers Roe v. Wade, its precursors and successors, including the 25 years of litigation after Roe. It is a “monumental, sprawling, insightful, frustrating, thought-provoking and wide-ranging book that chronicles one of the most profound transformations in the lives of modern Americans,” writes sociologist and legal scholar Kristin Luker in the New York Times. She notes that “much of the struggle to define the limits of the sexual revolution took place in legislatures and in the courts.” The case, Garrow concludes, represents one of the two most important stories in 20th century legal history (the other is Brown v. Board of Education). What happens next will likely be determined by the US presidential election.

Dreamland by Sam Quinones (2015)

Dreamland, winner of Quinones' National Book Critics Circle Award, pieces together the puzzle of “the worst drug scourge to ever hit the country.” “Children from the most privileged group in the richest country in the history of the world were becoming addicted and dying in near epidemic numbers from substances intended to numb pain,” he writes. Opiate overdose deaths increased from 10 per day in 1999 to one every 30 minutes in 2012. Quinones' column on 'painkillers, pill mills, Mexican traffickers, the calm surrounding the epidemic' , is told in dramatic and heartbreaking detail, connecting small towns. and suburbs across the United States with a small town in Mexico in “catastrophic synergy.” OxyContin came first, he writes, “introduced by Purdue Pharma representatives over steak and dessert and in air-conditioned medical offices. A few years later, black tar heroin followed in tiny uninflated balloons held in the mouths of Xalisco sugar cane farm boys driving an old Nissan Sentra to dates in McDonald's parking lots.” Quinones offer glimmers of hope, including the widespread availability of naloxone, the antidote for heroin overdoses (also now used against fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 50 times more potent than heroin). The ultimate antidote, he asserts, is community.

Life After Capitalism by George Gilder (2023)

Economist Gilder's 1981 book, Wealth and Poverty, defined supply-side economics and influenced Reagan administration policy. His new proposal offers a contrarian theory based on the concept that knowledge is the true wealth. “When you insert your credit card into the gas pump, what you are really buying is the knowledge that makes the transaction possible,” Gilder writes. The essence of life after capitalism, he asserts, is “the enormous shift of power enabled by government control of money, from productive citizens, innovators and entrepreneurs to politicians, bankers and the bureaucrats.” Gilder's system is based on information theory. “Economics focuses on human desires and incentives; information theory focuses on human creativity.” Its key principles: “Wealth is knowledge, growth is learning, information is surprise, money is time. » Gilder tends to side with the optimists, who believe that technology, entrepreneurship and innovation can drive economic progress. Economic concerns are at the heart of the upcoming election, with the majority of Americans (about 70 percent, according to Pew research) worried about the rising costs of food and housing.

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