Democracy’s Discontent

An important book about the meaning of liberty…By revealing the shallowness of liberal and conservative views of democracy, [Sandel] inspires us to reevaluate what American politics is really about. -- John B. Judis * Washington Post Book World *
Sandel gives us one of the most powerful works of public philosophy to appear in recent years…A brilliant diagnosis. -- Fouad Ajami * U.S. News & World Report *
A profound contribution to our understanding of the present discontents. -- Paul A. Rahe * Wall Street Journal *
An elegant reading of constitutional controversies and political arguments, this book is bound to change the course of American historiography, political philosophy, and legal scholarship. -- Jane Mansbridge, author of Beyond Adversary Democracy and Why We Lost the E.R.A
Among liberalism’s critics, few have been more influential or insightful than Michael Sandel…This carefully argued, consistently thought-provoking book is grounded in a sophisticated understanding of past and present political debates. -- Eric Foner * The Nation *
A detailed, coherent and marvelously illuminating narrative of American political and legal history. Recounting the debates over ratifying the Constitution, chartering a national bank, abolishing slavery, the spread of wage labor, Progressive Era reforms and the New Deal, Sandel skillfully highlights the presence (and, increasingly, absence) of republican ideology, the shift from a ‘political economy of citizenship’ to a political economy of growth. -- George Scialabba * Boston Globe *
Sandel’s wonderful new book…will help produce what he desires — a quickened sense of the moral consequences of political practices and economic arrangements…[A] splendid explanation of our rich political tradition. -- George F. Will * Newsweek *
A brilliant book…Sandel suggests that we won’t heal our fractured body politic unless we revive an American civic tradition that understands freedom not only as liberty from coercion but also as the freedom to govern ourselves together. It will challenge liberals and conservatives, moderates and radicals in ways they have not been challenged before. -- E. J. Dionne, Jr., author of Why Americans Hate Politics
Democracy’s Discontent is a wonderful example of immanent social criticism, which is to say, of social criticism as it ought to be written. -- Michael Walzer, in Debating Democracy's Discontent
Michael Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent is an inspired and deeply disturbing polemic about citizenship…The most compelling…account I have read of how citizens might draw on the energies of everyday life and the ties of civil society to reinvigorate the public realm. -- Richard Sennett * Times Literary Supplement *
Beautifully argued…American history is, in Mr. Sandel’s telling, a story of the tragic loss of civic republicanism— the notion that liberty is not about freedom from government, but about the capacity for self- government, which alone makes the practice of freedom possible. -- Andrew Sullivan * New York Times Book Review *
A bold and compelling critique of American liberalism that challenges us to reassess some basic assumptions about our public life and its dilemmas. It is a remarkable fusion of philosophical and historical scholarship. -- Alan Brinkley, author of The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
Americans have lost faith in the possibility of self-government, and they are frightened by the disintegration of community they see happening all around them. Twenty-six years since Democracy’s Discontent was first published, Sandel writes that this way of thinking has brought us to a political precipice—a moment when the combination of frayed social bonds and intense political polarization calls into question the very future of the American experiment. -- Win McCormack * New Republic *
Few books are as relevant a quarter-century after their appearance as when published—but Michael Sandel has made his classic Democracy’s Discontent even more so. Rethinking how the political economy of the middle of the twentieth century has mutated to the detriment of American citizenship, substituting consumerism and globalization for community and self-rule, this is a touchstone study for our times. -- Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
Michael Sandel’s deeply insightful analysis of the erosion of the political economy of citizenship has never been more timely than at the present moment. Essential—and ultimately hopeful—reading for all those who wonder if our democratic experiment will survive in the twenty-first century. -- Greta R. Krippner, author of Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance