Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Jon Meacham’s best-seller, The Soul of America:  The Battle for Our Better Angels!  It was a good read in the Meacham fashion:   clear, straight-forward and timely.  Here is a brief description as per a review by Princeton professor of history, Sean Wilentz:

“Covering the century that stretched from the abolition of slavery to the civil-rights victories of the mid-1960s, Meacham explains how the nation has required activist liberal presidents — above all Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson — to replace fear with hope and then to reverse injustice and expand equality. Our better angels, Meacham implies, reside in that part of the American soul that inspired the Square Deal, the New Deal and the Great Society.

At a time when liberalism is besieged by populisms of both the right and the left, these portions of Meacham’s book offer a strong if unfashionable reminder of all that progressive American government has achieved. His book even recalls the kinds of confident histories written 50 years ago by the likes of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Eric Goldman, in which the nation was delivered from the forces of complacency and reaction, and achieved great political and social reforms. Meacham widens the field of historical influence to include activists and intellectuals usually deemed outside the mainstream, above all W. E. B. Du Bois.”

I happened to like especially Meacham’s treatment of the Joe McCarthy era in the early 1950s mainly because of the connections to the present.  Here are several quotes:

“To McCarthy, the new medium (television) created nearly unlimited possibilities to dominate the public consciousness, and he values performance over substance.  ‘People aren’t going to remember the things we say on the issues here, our logic, our common sense, our facts’ McCarthy remarked to Roy Cohn before the televised army hearings:  ‘They’re only going to remember the impressions.”

…When he read coverage he disliked.  McCarthy did not keep quiet – he went on the offense singling out specific publications and particular journalists, sometimes at rallies.”

Meacham’s last paragraph in this section:

“A notable fixer, Cohn thrived at the nexus of law, politics, media, and society.  ‘I don’t know what the law is.’  One of his more celebrated clients in after-years was a young real estate developer who was looking to move into Manhattan from his family’s base in Queens.  And Roy Cohn was always there for Donald Trump.”

Tony

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