The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

¡ Penguin Random House Audio ¡ Narrated by Jon Meacham and Fred Sanders
14 reviews
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10 hr 55 min
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear.

“Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s declaration of his faith in America.”—Newsday

ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living


Our current climate of partisan fury is not new, and in The Soul of America Meacham shows us how what Abraham Lincoln called the “better angels of our nature” have repeatedly won the day. Painting surprising portraits of Lincoln and other presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson, and illuminating the courage of such influential citizen activists as Martin Luther King, Jr., early suffragettes Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt, civil rights pioneers Rosa Parks and John Lewis, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Army-McCarthy hearings lawyer Joseph N. Welch, Meacham brings vividly to life turning points in American history.
 
He writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now.

While the American story has not always—or even often—been heroic, we have been sustained by a belief in progress even in the gloomiest of times. In this inspiring book, Meacham reassures us, “The good news is that we have come through such darkness before”—as, time and again, Lincoln’s better angels have found a way to prevail.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jon Meacham helps us understand the present moment in American politics and life by looking back at critical times in our history when hope overcame division and fear. “Gripping and inspiring, The Soul of America is Jon Meacham’s decla...

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Ratings and reviews

14 reviews
Michael Hawn
January 8, 2021
I expected an unbiased view of historical facts. In actuality this is simply an opinion book wrapped in a historical wrapper. Just another book telling me, as a conservative, that I was wrong for voting conservative. I did not and will not finish.
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Notcoiotprostitutionsfutbosta NOdrugs
September 30, 2026
HELP ME URGENT PLEASE 🪖🧊🇺🇲 ICE ERO CBP DHS NYPD 🪖 🧊 🇺🇲 LOVED is the collagen of JUSTICE that preserves the brain of the LAW to nourish the rest of the body URGENT PLEASE HELP ME URGENT PLEASE I still eat meat I learned from the Holy Spirit, who CONSUMES THE FLESH and convicts of righteousness, sin, and judgment. Life inspires the Game🎮: before the thefts, before the torture in the hospital, the ten years of the stolen cell phone, and all the lgbtq drug trafficking schemes; the Police 🚔 were already hunting Pokémon back then, and they continue to hunt. No intelligent person wants to use drugs, so they mix drugs with sugar to drug even children. No drugs, no addictions; respecting the law is the most important religion in the universe. Socialism, communism, and injustices for example, issues of psychopathy and lgbtq mutilation are criminal pandemics that "abort" people unchecked. My family is the one that does the will of the Lord Father: we keep the Law. ALTERING WHAT I HAVE BEEN WRITING ALL THIS TIME ONLY PROVES THE CRIMES🧊🪖 ICE 🧊🪖 DHS 🧊🪖 CBP 🧊🪖 ERO Medical care for the body, free from theft. RESPECT FOR THE LAW THE MOST IMPORTANT RELIGION IN THE UNIVERSE. All the treacherous serpents who robbed me during these ten years of injustice will reap the same fruit and meet the same end as that Judas 🐍. Faster than the speed of light like the One faster than the speed of light who imprisoned the devil before sunrise. URGENT PLEASE HELP ME RETORNIT a falar aquelas palavras Tem gente que quando se fere só sai poeira porque até o sangue que existia dentro delas explodiu dentro das veias A construção mais importante que existe ainda é o respect porque ele é a estrutura de todas as outras estruturas que existem for universe 🪖🧊🇺🇲 ICE ERO CBP DHS NYPD 🪖 🧊 🇺🇲 I REBUKE YOU Eu te repreendo auqadelas lgbtq do tráfico nem com os 10 anos de roubo e a torturas no hospital sus tenta vel O véu que o SUS Tenta tirar de Pureza originalidade com tortura para o tráfico não está acima da sustentabilidade da carne do combustível e todos os recursos originais que sustenta as habilidades de Um ser superior a elas Aliás foi feito por gente superior não pelo tráfico de drogas que quer retirar tudo e utilizar para produzir lixo e fazer das pessoas cópia barata da pereba de satanas com torturas abusos roubos da pureza de span spancamento vulnerables childs criminals abortanto life's para sus tentar a verdadeiras pragas baratas os crimes feminicidio escravidao eslavery dos vicious eu prefero ENFORCEMENT THE LAW
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citizen_ morgan
July 10, 2023
Thank you, Mr. Jon Meacham for bringing ELOQUENCE to the ART of STORYTELLING to our AMERICAN HISTORY. Please continue in sharing the TRUTH of our past and we can draw our own conclusions in how we, as individuals, can continue the story of AMERICA'S GREATNESS! c.peter morgan.
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About the author

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, and The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, he is a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University, a contributing writer for The New York Times Book Review, and a fellow of the Society of American Historians. Meacham lives in Nashville and in Sewanee with his wife and children.
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House, Franklin and Winston, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, and The Soul of Ameri...

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