Description:
From Patrick Henry's cry for liberty to the Constitution's framework for self-government, Stewart explores nine key documents that proclaimed America's founding principles.
Brief description: David O. Stewart is an award-winning historian and bestselling author whose books bring America's Founding Era to life. He is the author of works of history including The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution, Madison's Gift, American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln's Legacy, and George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father, a finalist for the George Washington Prize.Stewart practiced trial and appellate law for many years, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and serving as principal counsel in a U.S. Senate impeachment trial. He writes frequently about American history, law, and government, and was the founding president of the Washington Independent Review of Books.He lives in Potomac, Maryland.
Review Quotes:
"A great scholar of the American past, David O. Stewart has brilliantly mined what has come before to guide us in our own, all-too-urgent American present. An important and timely volume." Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The American Struggle
"The American experiment was built through action based upon the ideas preserved in our founding documents. In this compelling call to engage with our past to secure our future, David Stewart shows that democracy is not a spectator sport, but a responsibility each generation must uphold." Colleen Shogan, 11th Archivist of the United States, CEO of In Pursuit
"In The Democracy We Must Keep, noted historian David O. Stewart provides an inspiring antidote to America's current dangers of one-man rule and unprincipled government. Alarmed citizens can do no better than read Stewart's compact account of how America's flame of liberty was kindled, and how we must restore it." James McGrath Morris is a New York Times best-selling biographer and author of Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power
"The cause of America is...the cause of all mankind," the pamphleteer Tom Paine wrote in 1776. Grappling with very human sins and flaws, Americans have led the cause of freedom from Valley Forge to Omaha Beach, and promoted human rights from Seneca Falls to Selma. But now a deviant strain of oppression stalks America: What better moment for David O. Stewart, jurist and historian, to bring us The Democracy We Must Keep, a crisp and eloquent reminder of our better selves. "Only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger," John F. Kennedy said. "I do not shrink from this responsibility, I welcome it." So does Stewart, and in his books we find the energy, the faith and the devotion that Kennedy called for. The trumpet summons us again and Stewart, to our good fortune, is a virtuoso. John A. Farrell, Author of Richard Nixon: The Life, Pulitzer Prize finalist