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jeffburns's review
4.0
The Nation That Never Was: Reconstructing America's Story. Kermit Roosevelt III. University of Chicago Press, 2022, 256 pages.
If you are interested in reading a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the true character of the United States, The Nation That Never Was may be a book for you. It is challenging, but not in a difficult-to read, legal-ese, constitutional-theorists-having-a-scotch-in-a-wood-paneled-library-esoteric-debate kind of way. It challenges what Americans have been taught and think they know about the founding of America and its two most important founding documents, and it challenges our ideas about American ideals, but it's written in very accessible language.
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, constitutional scholar, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
From the beginning, Roosevelt describes the American dilemma: Do we acknowledge and address the shortcomings of America's history and move forward together from there? Or do we continue perpetuating the "standard" story of the founding, created as part of the effort to build a nation but not truthful and accurate, and simply erase the negative elements? In the book, he thoroughly examines the "standard" simplistic and sentimentalized story we've all learned (and taught) and breaks it down, pointing out exaggerations, truths, and untruths. Then he lays out a new way of looking at America's story. That new story is that we should define our national identity around the promises, challenges, and aspirations (some still unachieved) of Reconstruction instead of the founding period. Like Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, he lays out the case for 1865, rather than 1776 or 1619, as modern America's starting point. However, he also distinguishes and separates his argument from those, like Foner, who have called Reconstruction "the Second Founding."
I don't agree with everything Roosevelt wrote, but it was definitely worth reading and thinking about.
If you are interested in reading a thoughtful and thought-provoking take on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the true character of the United States, The Nation That Never Was may be a book for you. It is challenging, but not in a difficult-to read, legal-ese, constitutional-theorists-having-a-scotch-in-a-wood-paneled-library-esoteric-debate kind of way. It challenges what Americans have been taught and think they know about the founding of America and its two most important founding documents, and it challenges our ideas about American ideals, but it's written in very accessible language.
Kermit Roosevelt III is an American author, lawyer, constitutional scholar, and a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a great-great-grandson of United States President Theodore Roosevelt and a distant cousin of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
From the beginning, Roosevelt describes the American dilemma: Do we acknowledge and address the shortcomings of America's history and move forward together from there? Or do we continue perpetuating the "standard" story of the founding, created as part of the effort to build a nation but not truthful and accurate, and simply erase the negative elements? In the book, he thoroughly examines the "standard" simplistic and sentimentalized story we've all learned (and taught) and breaks it down, pointing out exaggerations, truths, and untruths. Then he lays out a new way of looking at America's story. That new story is that we should define our national identity around the promises, challenges, and aspirations (some still unachieved) of Reconstruction instead of the founding period. Like Reconstruction historian Eric Foner, he lays out the case for 1865, rather than 1776 or 1619, as modern America's starting point. However, he also distinguishes and separates his argument from those, like Foner, who have called Reconstruction "the Second Founding."
I don't agree with everything Roosevelt wrote, but it was definitely worth reading and thinking about.
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