Six books to help understand the United States and its politics

From The Pursuit of Happiness to Economics – In the run-up to the election, here are some books that provide context, insight, and perspectives on the United States.

In the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election, there appears to be a lot for residents to disagree about. To help understand 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 shifts in conservative politics – beginning in the Reagan era – to the cultural foundations of the United States. Also in the mix: the opioid drug epidemic, which began in 1996 with the marketing of the pain drug OxyContin, and the economy, amid concerns about the cost of living. Can the United States achieve a sense of “we the people” despite its differences? This is the question that the November 5 elections must answer.

Jill Lepore, a Harvard history professor and New Yorker contributor, derives the title of her comprehensive and influential history of the United States from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator.” With certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The book covers the 16th century to 2018, and is “the story of a multiracial nation at its founding, and of those who sought ways to realize 'these truths,'” he wrote. John S Gardner in The Guardian. “No nation before or since has witnessed such strife and wealth,” Andrew Sullivan wrote in the New York Times Book Review. “No country has ever been defined as a country of strangers and travellers, where waves and waves of immigration were constantly flowing through the community… Never has there been a people equally zealous for slavery and freedom.” These facts are the perfect civics book for these times. It is not a story of “relentless progress,” as The New York Times Best Books of 2018 notes, “but a story of conflict and contradiction, with the cross-currents of reason and faith, black and white, immigrants and natives, industry and agriculture, rippling through the narrative. And that’s far from it.” About completion.

The final part of Perlstein's four-volume book on the rise of conservatism in the United States is a colorful narrative history. Pearlstein begins with the Gerald Ford/Jimmy Carter presidential campaign. Reagan, an unwinnable primary candidate, refused to help Ford, setting the stage for his successful run against Carter four years later. “It's all here — the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, Brother Billy, the Panama Canal Treaty, California's Proposition 13 property tax cut, supply-side economics, the Killer Rabbit, direct mail, the Ford Pinto, Ted Kennedy, Three Mile Island,” The Distress and the Hundreds of Other Incidents and Stories that Defined These Turbulent Years,” John S. Gardner wrote in The Guardian. Reaganland “is essentially a social and political history, focusing on the movements and causes that powerfully animated public debate and the effects of major social changes, such as women's rights, on American life Follow that with Max Boot's new biography, Reagan, which focuses on the connections between Reagan and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

In his book The Culture Wars (1991), Hunter coined the term to describe the division between two opposing forces in the United States. “Democracy in America is in crisis,” he wrote in his new book, Democracy and Solidarity. He examines the political culture of the United States 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 vast swaths of humanity. “Hunter is the country’s leading cultural historian,” David Brooks wrote in The New York Times. “It reminds us that the political life of a nation depends on cultural foundations. Each society has its own way of seeing the world, its basic assumptions about what is right and what is wrong, and its own vision of a better world that gives national life direction and purpose.” American culture, which often achieves solidarity by opposing a common enemy or asserting a common goal, “has collapsed at its deepest levels,” Hunter writes.

In June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that granted women the constitutional right to an abortion, based on the right to privacy enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment. The measure set off a torrent of state bills to ban abortion, protests and parallel actions to restore Roe. In Jarrow's landmark legal history, he begins with a 40-year struggle to overturn a Connecticut law prohibiting birth control. It carefully covers Roe v Wade, its precursors and successors, including 25 years of post-Roe litigation. It is “a massive book, sprawling, insightful, frustrating, challenging and wide-ranging, chronicling one of the most profound transformations in the lives of contemporary Americans,” sociologist and legal scholar Christine Luker wrote in the New York Times. “Much of the struggle over the boundaries of the sexual revolution occurred in legislatures and in courtrooms,” she notes. Garrow concludes that this case represents one of the two most important stories in twentieth-century legal history (the other being Brown v. Board of Education). The US presidential election will likely determine what comes next.

Quinnon's National Book Critics Circle Award winner's Dreamland collects the mystery of “the worst drug scourge ever to 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 almost epidemic numbers from substances intended to numb pain,” he writes. Opioid overdose deaths rose from 10 a day in 1999 to one every 30 minutes by 2012. Quinones' chronicles of “pain pills, pill mills, Mexican traffickers, and the quiet surrounding the epidemic” are told in dramatic and heartbreaking detail, And connecting small towns. And suburbs across the United States with a small town in Mexico are in “disastrous synergy.” OxyContin came first, he writes, “served out by representatives from Purdue Pharma over steaks and candy and in air-conditioned doctors' offices. Within a few years, it was followed by black tar heroin in small, uninflated balloons that were placed in the mouths of sugar plantation boys from “Xalisco drives old Nissan Sentras to meets in McDonald’s parking lots.” Quinones offer a glimmer of hope, including the widespread availability of naloxone, the antidote to heroin overdose (which is now also used against fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than Heroin). He believes that the ultimate antidote is society.

Economist Gilder's 1981 book Wealth and Poverty defined supply-side economics and influenced the policies of the Reagan administration. His new theory presents a contradictory theory based on the concept that knowledge is 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. He sees the essence of life after capitalism as “the massive shift of power – enabled by government control of money… away from productive, inventive, and entrepreneurial citizens to politicians, bankers, and bureaucrats.” Gilder's system is based on information theory. “Economics focuses on human desires and incentives, while information theory focuses on human creativity.” Its basic principles: “Wealth is knowledge, growth is learning, information is surprise, and money is time.” Gelder tends to side with the optimists, confident that technology, entrepreneurship and innovation can drive economic progress. Economic concerns are extremely important in the upcoming elections, as the majority of Americans (about 70% according to Pew Center research) are concerned about rising food and housing costs.