The Soul of America

The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s 2018 work of popular American history, written with one eye on the present moment and one eye on the long arc of the country. Subtitled The Battle for Our Better Angels, the book argues that periods of fear, division, and reactionary politics are not new in American history. They have come around again and again, and the country has so far always managed to find its way back toward what Meacham frames as its better tendencies. He examines a series of dark moments in the past and the leaders who helped pull the nation through them.

Meacham moves through the slavery debates of the antebellum period, Reconstruction and the failure of equal rights after the Civil War, the second Klan in the 1920s, the deportations of the Wilson era, the appeasement of Hitler that almost happened, the McCarthy hearings, the civil rights struggle, and the various other crisis points where the country could have gone in a much darker direction than it did. The figures who get the most attention are presidents like Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, alongside reformers, activists, and writers who pushed those leaders forward.

Meacham is not subtle about his contemporary context. The book was written in the early years of the Trump administration and the parallels he draws are deliberate. Critics on the left argued he was too optimistic about America’s capacity to self correct. Critics on the right argued he was using history to score current political points. Both sides had something to point at, and the book sold well to readers who were looking for some kind of historical reassurance.

For readers who enjoy Doris Kearns Goodwin’s presidential biographies or David McCullough’s accessible histories, Meacham is squarely in the same lane.