A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A most anticipated book of 2022 at Vulture and Kirkus Reviews A leading historian tells the story of the United States’ most enduring political party and its long, imperfect, and newly invigorated quest for “moral capitalism,” from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden. The Democratic Party is the world’s oldest mass political organization. But what has the party stood for through the centuries, and how has it managed to succeed in elections and govern? In What It Took to Win , the eminent historian Michael Kazin tells the story of the party’s longtime commitment to promoting “moral capitalism,” a system that mixes entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers. Yet the party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or furthered the causes of slavery, segregation, and Native American removal. With its evolution toward a more inclusive, egalitarian vision, the party won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it has also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda. Kazin traces the party’s fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from William Jennings Bryan to Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that defines the life of the Democratic Party and outlines the core components of a political legacy that President Joe Biden and his co-partisans rely on today as they seek to revitalize the American political experiment.

In his bestseller The Tempting of America , Robert Bork portrayed himself as someone whose views are in the American mainstream, and has said that the failure of the Senate to approve him was an aberration. On the contrary, Matters of Principle shows that with the rejection of Bork, Americans emphatically reaffirmed one of the enduring virtues of our national character—a fervent belief in individual rights. In the end, Americans rejected the cramped vision of Robert Bork and the Right. Matters of Principle is a lively, provocative, and thoughtful first-hand account of this tumultuous battle for control of the Supreme Court, a battle that continues to make news but whose strategy was shaped largely behind closed doors. For Joseph Biden, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it would prove to be a watershed moment. Biden wanted to be President and was in the middle of a campaign for the Democratic nomination when the process began. Robert Bork’s ambition was to serve on the Supreme Court. Both saw their dreams die amid constant pressures from political action groups, other senators, editorial boards, and the President. The goal for Biden was to make the American public interested in a battle over judicial philosophy without being perceived as a political opportunist. Bork’s aim was to become the standard-bearer of the Reagan Revolution, to project himself as a moderate, while his judicial decisions and his writings showed otherwise. The inner proceedings provide a fascinating look at the players in this event, from the editorial boards of The New York Times and The Washington Post to the Senate chambers of Biden, Thurmond, Kennedy, et al., to the White House, where President Reagan erred enormously, first by choosing Bork, then by adopting faulty strategy to help him, and finally by apparently abandoning Bork and leaving him without strong support. Perhaps most important, Matters of Principle is a story about the clash of judicial ideas and ideals. Mark Gitenstein traces the evolution of Bork’s legal philosophy from his days at Yale through his time in the Nixon Administration, finally offering a portrait of a man far from the mainstream of American beliefs.

Spanning nearly one hundred years of American political history, and abounding with outsize characters—from Lindbergh to Goldwater to Gingrich to Abramoff— White Protestant Nation offers a penetrating look at the origins, evolution, and triumph (at times) of modern conservatism. Lichtman is both a professor of political history at American University and a veteran journalist, and after ten years of prodigious research, he has produced what may be the definitive history of the modern conservative movement in America. He brings to life a gallery of dynamic right-wing personalities, from luminaries such as Strom Thurmond, Phyllis Schlafly, and Bill Kristol to indispensable inside operators like financiers Frank Gannett and J. Howard Pew. He explodes the conventional wisdom that modern conservative politics began with Goldwater and instead traces the roots of today's movement to the 1920s. And he lays bare the tactics that conservatives have used for generations to put their slant on policy and culture; to choke the growth of the liberal state; and to build the most powerful media, fundraising, and intellectual network in the history of representative government. White Protestant Nation is entertaining, provocative, enlightening, and essential reading for anyone who cares about modern American politics and its history.