The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels

The shining city on a hill was supposed to replace remote big government with a community of energetic and compassionate citizens, all engaged in a project of national renewal. But nothing held the city together. It was hollow at the center, a collection of individuals all wanting more. Free America measured civic health by gross domestic product.

Roosevelt’s wartime leadership resembles that of Lincoln. As in 1933, he restored the nation’s confidence.

Praying for guidance at a mass meeting the next day, King said, “Lord, I hope no one will have to die as a result of our struggle for freedom in Montgomery. Certainly I don’t want to die. But if anyone has to die, let it be me.” Two weeks later, while Coretta and Yoki were in Atlanta, something—he wasn’t sure what—disturbed King during the night; l

WITH ALMOST the first words of his speech, the audience—the congressmen and Senators with whom he had served, the Cabinet members he had appointed, the black-robed Justices of the Supreme Court, the Ambassadors of other nations, a few in robes of far-off countries as if to dramatize that the world as well as America was listening, the packed galler

the Selma march, Lewis recalled, “injected something very special into the soul and the heart and the veins of America. It said, in effect, that we must humanize our social and political and economic structure. When people saw what happened on that bridge, there was a sense of revulsion all over America.” Revulsion, then redemption: Is there anythi