Dear Reader,
My new book, AMERICA IN 25 REVOLUTIONS, is out this week — and it’s Veterans Day, so what better way to mark today than listening to this special excerpt of the audiobook, featuring the chapter on the revolution of Harry Truman desegregating the military in 1948? This is the first time I’ve read my own audiobook in its entirety, and we sent the excerpt out over the “Long Shadow” feed, so if you’re a fan of the podcast, you’ll see it there too.
The early reviews of the book are in, and I’m incredibly happy to see how readers are responding to the book’s vision: Kirkus Reviews called it “Inspiring reading for activists and history buffs alike,” and Publisher’s Weekly wrote “Graff urges readers to remember that ‘we are the founders for the next generation.’ Full of closely rendered historical detail, this conjures the breakneck pace, moral highs and lows, and staggering scope of 250 years of social revolution.”
You can purchase the book anywhere you get your books, including online at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and that other place.
If you’d like a signed or inscribed copy — they go in the mail tomorrow! — please order from Phoenix Books here, my local independent.
All signed copies from Phoenix come with the special set of bar coasters drawn by POLITICO cartoonist Matt Wuerker, featuring nine of the “modern-day Founders” whose stories I tell in the book, including Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Alice Paul, Zitkala-Ša, Frank Kameny, and more:
Also:
While I can’t sign your copies across the rest of the country, for launch week, if you email me at [email protected] with a book receipt from any brick-and-mortar bookstore this week — whether it’s your local independent or your neighborhood Barnes & Noble or Books-a-Million, etc. — I’ll be happy to send you a set of coasters too!
I wanted to share today the full set of the 25 revolutions I feature in and throughout the book — each of them chosen in an attempt to highlight the different ways change happens in the United States and the different constituencies and groups of citizens who have demanded change over the course of our 250 years.
While you might be familiar with some of these — Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement — I promise that many of these will be unfamiliar or will surprise you with their significance: The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, for example, is actually the most far-reaching piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress—and the only one that has the potential to be used by every American over the course of their lifetime.
You’ll see across these 25 stories how different group across the last 250 years of American history — Blacks, women, Chinese, Native Americans, gays, the elderly, Puerto Ricans, Jewish people, and even “poor” whites among others — wrote themselves into the vision first laid out by the Founders in 1776. Many of them were not considered Americans in the Founders’ age, either legally or morally, but through their organizing, agitating, lobbying, and reform efforts managed to erase the circle of who “counts” as an American and make it larger than before.
Not all of these are “revolutions” in government — there are chapters on how the early gay rights movement organized and lobbied to force the American Psychiatrist Association to remove “homosexuality” from the field’s list of mental disorders and how quotas for Jewish students at Ivy League schools affected two generations.
Similarly, while we often focus on the story of human rights, civil rights, and liberties, Americans have regularly asserted what I call in the book “qualitative rights,” moments when they raise the expectation of what we deserve as citizens — whether it’s the end of the “spoils system,” the right to safe food and drink, consumer safety, or breathable air and drinkable water.
Here was the list I ended up with, of 25 moments when America has gotten better, closer to the Founders’ still-never-achieved vision, but a little more just, more equal, and more free:
THE PEOPLE’S SHIELD — The Bill of Rights and the Right to Improve (1791)
OPENING DEMOCRACY’S DOOR — Mobility, Voting, and the Right to Move (1800–1850)
An illustration showing the first Black senators and representatives elected amid Reconstruction. (National Archives)
THE UNION REBORN — Reconstruction and the Right to Equal Citizenship (1865–1870)
ENDING THE SPOILS — The Merit Revolution and the Right to Honest Government (1883)
WHITEWASHED HISTORY — Yick Wo v Hopkins and the Right to Equal Protection (1886)
MAKING AMERICA HEALTHY — Harvey Wiley’s Hygienic Tables, The Jungle, and the Right to Safe Food (1906)
BREAKER BOYS, SPINNERS, AND SHRIMPERS — Lewis Hine and the Right to a Childhood (1912)
“A group of newly made Americans at Ponce, Porto Rico” (National Archives)
THE OTHER AMERICANS — Puerto Rico, the Jones-Shafroth Act, and the Right to Citizenship (1917)
A VOICE AT LAST — Women’s Suffrage and the Right to Political Equality (1920)
A NEW DEAL FOR NATIVE NATIONS — The Indian Reorganization Act and the Right to Self-Government (1934)
A PROMISE FOR TOMORROW — The Social Security Act and the Right to Grow Old Without Fear (1935)
BROTHERS IN ARMS — Harry Truman’s Desegregation of the US Military and the Right to Equal Service (1948)
OPENING THE GATES — The Ivy League’s Jewish Quotas and the Right to Equal Opportunity (1950s)
AMERICA’S GREAT RECKONING — The Civil Rights Act and the Right to Equal Access (1964)
MAKING SAFETY MATTER — Ralph Nader and the Right to Consumer Safety (1965)
“YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT” — Gideon, Miranda, and the Right to Due Process (1966)
A KNOCK IN THE NIGHT — Loving v Virginia and the Right to Love (1967)
SEEDS OF A MOVEMENT — Silent Spring and the Right to a Healthy Environment (1972)
THE HOPES OF JANE ROE — The Sexual Revolution and the Right to Privacy (1973)
AMERICA’S GREATEST “CURE” — Homosexuality, Psychiatry, and the Right to Dignity (1973)
Patsy Mink, the first woman of color and first Asian-American elected to Congress. (National Archives)
THE UNFINISHED BUSINESS OF SUFFRAGE — The Gender Equality Revolution, Title IX, and the Right to Equal Opportunity (1974)
BRINGING NATIVE CHILDREN HOME — The Indian Child Welfare Act and the Right to Cultural Survival (1978)
THE BARRIERS COME DOWN — The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Right to Accessibility (1990)
FAMILIES UNDER THE LAW — Obergefell and the Right to Marriage Equality (2015)
JACKSON’S PROMISE — McGirt v Oklahoma and the Right to Tribal Sovereignty (2020)
I hope you’ll have the chance to dive into AMERICA IN 25 REVOLUTIONS, either in print or the audiobook, in the days and weeks ahead.
It’s an incredible story of hope and optimism, exactly at the time we need it most! As I’ve been doing interviews this week, everyone is wondering: Are we in another moment of revolution?
Are we at the start of a 26th?
I hope so.
GMG
