Three Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historians Aim To Put American Politics In Context
It's hard to make time for history books when there is so much history crashing down on us every single day — and especially when that history is divisive, aggressive and seemingly never-ending.
Case in point: This book review was due a week ago. Rather than finish this assignment, I spent the week in Senate hallways and hearing rooms, watching in real time as the most contentious Supreme Court confirmation in a generation turned into a national flashpoint on sexual assault and gender politics.
It's the type of disorienting and disconcerting news story that makes you cry out for the context of history books. (If only you then had the time to read them!)
Luckily, three of America's most prominent Sunday-show friendly, Pulitzer Prize-winning historians are here to help. Two new books — one by Doris Kearns Goodwin and another by Joseph J. Ellis — along with a book released in May by Jon Meacham — aim to make sense of a period their jacket flaps alternatively refer to as the "discord of our times," our "current climate of partisan fury" and a "divided America that is currently incapable of sustained argument
