How Books Can Save Democracy

How Books Can Save Democracy argues that American democracy is in trouble. Healthy democracies thrive on constructive disagreement: individuals and groups engaging with different points of view on school boards, city councils, juries, and in many other settings. In faltering democracies, disagreement escalates into the fight-to-the-finish battles that have become familiar scenes in American politics: one side doing whatever it can to vilify and vanquish the adversaries it despises. Saving American democracy depends on rebuilding confidence that citizens with different perspectives can work things out together, without resorting to force or calling on strong-armed leaders to take up their cause.