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Title details for The Nation That Never Was by Kermit Roosevelt III - Available

The Nation That Never Was

Reconstructing America's Story

by Kermit Roosevelt III
ebook
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1 of 1 copy available
Our idea of the Founders' America and its values is not true. We are not the heirs of the Founders, but we can be the heirs of Reconstruction and its vision for equality.

There's a common story we tell about America: that our fundamental values as a country were stated in the Declaration of Independence, fought for in the Revolution, and made law in the Constitution. But, with the country increasingly divided, this story isn't working for us anymore—what's more, it's not even true. As Kermit Roosevelt argues in this eye-opening reinterpretation of the American story, our fundamental values, particularly equality, are not part of the vision of the Founders. Instead, they were stated in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and were the hope of Reconstruction, when it was possible to envision the emergence of the nation committed to liberty and equality.

We face a dilemma these days. We want to be honest about our history and the racism and oppression that Americans have both inflicted and endured. But we want to be proud of our country, too. In The Nation That Never Was, Roosevelt shows how we can do both those things by realizing we're not the country we thought we were. Reconstruction, Roosevelt argues, was not a fulfillment of the ideals of the Founding but rather a repudiation: we modern Americans are not the heirs of the Founders but of the people who overthrew and destroyed that political order. This alternate understanding of American identity opens the door to a new understanding of ourselves and our story, and ultimately to a better America.

America today is not the Founders' America, but it can be Lincoln's America. Roosevelt offers a powerful and inspirational rethinking of our country's history and uncovers a shared past that we can be proud to claim and use as a foundation to work toward a country that fully embodies equality for all.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 24, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780226817620

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780226817620
      • File size: 514 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 31, 2022
      Misunderstandings about the language and intent of America’s founding documents are the cause of today’s political dysfunctions, according to this impassioned revisionist history. Constitutional law scholar Roosevelt (The Myth of Judicial Activism) maintains that the values taken for granted by most Americans were not actually encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence, because the statement “All men are created equal” was not intended to mean that all people have equal rights. Delving into the precise language of the Declaration, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and other landmark texts, Roosevelt documents the founding fathers’ problematic views on race and slavery and makes the strong case that Americans today are more properly the heirs of the people who “rejected the Founders’ Constitution”: President Lincoln and other proponents of Reconstruction, “which for all its failures was born from the belief that we fight not only for ourselves, that we should lift up even those we did not push down, and that the future can be better than the past.” Astute textual analysis, careful historical research, and a deep commitment to social justice make this an inspiring reexamination of America’s past.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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