About this Event
Parnassus Books and Vanderbilt University are thrilled to present an evening with Jon Meacham, in conversation with a special guest, to celebrate Jon's new book, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union.
This ticketed event will take place in the Commodore Ballroom of the Student Life Center on Vanderbilt University campus. The event will take place on Wednesday, February 25th at 6:30 p.m. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets:
Each ticket is $41.75 and includes one general admission seat and one signed copy of American Struggle.
Note: All books will be pre-signed. There will be no signing line for personalizations or books from home.
Parking and Directions:
Please check back later for updated parking information.
About the book:
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America unites centuries of essential American voices to understand our national debates and divisions from 1619 to the present, with his signature commentary on the consequential speeches, letters, and essays that led us to this moment.
In a polarized era, history can become a subject of political contention. Many see America as perfect; many others argue that the national experiment is fundamentally flawed. The truth, Meacham shows, likely lies between these extremes. America has had shining hours, and also dark ones.
In American Struggle, Jon Meacham illuminates the nation's complicated past. This rich and diverse collection covers a wide spectrum of history, from 1619 to the twenty-first century, with primary-source documents that take us back to critical moments in which Americans fought over the meaning and the direction of the national experiment. From the founders to Lincoln to Obama, from Andrew Jackson to Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan, from Seneca Falls to the March on Washington, this chorus--sometimes discordant and always fascinating--tells the story of the country and of its people. As clashes over liberty and slavery, inclusion and exclusion, play out, these voices, brilliantly framed by Meacham's singular commentary, remind us that contentious citizenship and fair-minded observations are essential to bringing about the more perfect union envisioned in the Preamble to the Constitution, which Frederick Douglass called a "glorious liberty document."
Conflict is nothing new in our democracy; rather, as Meacham and these texts show, tensions are inherent, stubborn, and perennial. And American Struggle teaches us anew that to know what has come before, to watch as long-running disputes rise and fall, is to be armed against despair.
About the author:
Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush; and His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope, he holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair in the American Presidency at Vanderbilt University and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Vanderbilt University Student Life Center, 310 25th Avenue South, Nashville, United States
USD 46.39
