America in 25 Revolutions: The Story of Our 250-Year Quest to Become a More Perfect Union

Summary

From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist Garrett M. Graff, America in 25 Revolutions follows America’s 250-year quest to fulfill the founders’ promise of a nation where all are created equal, introducing us to the ordinary champions who moved progress forward.

When Thomas Jefferson penned his creed, “all men are created equal,” it was a phrase far less universal than it first appeared. Excluded were women, enslaved Black people, poor whites, Native Americans, and other groups. It was, nonetheless, a revolutionary statement for its time, an assertion of rights and equality between the government and the governed, a reimagination of people not as “subjects” but as “citizens.” And from the moment America was founded, the residents of the United States began to advocate to change those definitions of “citizen” and expand the idea of who was included in that founding vision.

As the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, acclaimed historian Garrett M. Graff immerses us in the legendary—and the forgotten—milestones in Americans’ ongoing quest to create a more perfect union. Since our founding in 1776, Americans have never stopped fighting for revolutionary advances to get closer to our founding promise of a nation where all are created and treated equal. America in 25 Revolutions tells their stories.

The rights, freedoms, and opportunities so many of us now enjoy began as creative acts of imagination by individuals and groups excluded from the country’s founding principles. Progress has often been hard and come at great cost; many times, efforts to enshrine new rights and freedoms failed multiple times and efforts continued for years. From the Reconstruction Amendments in the 1860s to the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s, from Brown v. Board of Education to the end of Jewish quotas at elite universities, from the Social Security Act to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the stories in America in 25 Revolutions offer a critical lesson for a trying time in the United States: Progress isn’t linear nor is it constant, but the challenge our country delivers to each generation is to leave the nation better than it was. America in 25 Revolutions leaves us with restored inspiration and hope for tomorrow.