DEMOCRACY'S DISCONTENT

America in Search of a Public Philosophy

MICHAEL J. SANDEL

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BOOK REVIEWS / ADVANCE PRAISE

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• "In times of trouble men and women ransack their past and their traditions. In Democracy's Discontent...Michael Sandel...has raided that great American attic and returned with a bold narrative of the ancestors and the civic tradition they bequeathed...Sandel gives us one of the most powerful works of public philosophy to appear in recent years...[and] weaves a seamless web between the American present and the American past...[A] brilliant diagnosis."
  --Fouad Ajami, U.S. News & World Report

  "American political discourse has become thin gruel because of a deliberate deflation of American ideals. So says Michael Sandel in a wonderful new book, Democracy's Discontent...Sandel's book will help produce what he desires--a quickened sense of the moral consequences of political practices and economic arrangements...Sandel is right to regret the missing moral dimension of public discourse. Or he was until recently. Suddenly politics has reacquired a decidedly Sandelean dimension. Political debate is reconnecting with the concerns Sandel so lucidly examines...Statecraft is again soulcraft, and the citizens who will participate best, and with most zest, will be the fortunate readers of Sandel's splendid expansion of our rich political tradition."

  --George F. Will, Newsweek

  "A provocative new book...Democracy's Discontent argues that modern democracies will not be able to sustain themselves unless they can find ways of contending with the global economy, while also giving expression to their people's distinctive identities."

  --Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times

  "Michael Sandel...has written an important book about the meaning of liberty. Sandel argues that over the last century, Americans have abandoned an earlier communitarian view of liberty, rooted in participation in self-government, for a narrower, individualistic definition, based on the power of personal choice. That has led to the great paradox of American politics: Just as Americans have become freer in the conduct of their personal lives, they have become more constrained in their public lives. The strength of Sandel's book is his account of how this definition of liberty has changed over the last 200 years. He argues persuasively that the new definition reinforces undesirable trends in court decisions and public policy...Sandel argues brilliantly that the change in this definition of liberty took place after the Civil War and was based primarily on economic change...His analysis is superb...By revealing the shallowness of liberal and conservative views of democracy, [this book] inspires us to reevaluate what American politics is really about."

  --John B. Judis, Washington Post Book World

  "Among liberalism's critics, few have been more influential or insightful than Michael Sandel, a proponent of what has come to be called the `communitarian' alternative...In Democracy's Discontent, Sandel...offer[s] a full historical account of the evolution of liberalism in the United States...This carefully argued, consistently thought-provoking book is grounded in a sophisticated understanding of past and present political debates. Democracy's Discontent is well worth reading as we near yet another presidential election in which soundbites and poll-generated slogans substitute for reasoned debate about the nation's future."

  --Eric Foner, The Nation

  "Sandel's latest contribution...is notable for its seriousness, its intelligence and its illuminating excursions into constitutional law...His brand of soulcraft is not about soul-engineering, but about protecting social environments that are conducive to the development of the habits and the virtues upon which all liberal welfare states finally depend."

  --Mary Ann Glendon, New Republic

  "A profound contribution to our understanding of the present discontents."

  --Paul A. Rahe, Wall Street Journal

  "A wide-ranging critique of American liberalism that, unlike many other current books on the matter, seeks its restoration as a guiding political ethic...A book rich in ideas."

  --Kirkus Reviews

  "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, and it confirms Sandel's reputation as one of America's most important political theorists."

  --Alan Brinkley, Columbia University

  "An impressive work. It consolidates Sandel's position as the leading American republican-communitarian critic of rights-based liberalism...A major figure in the world of political theory has written a major book."

  --George Kateb, Princeton University

  "A brilliant book and a wise and refreshing antidote to so much of what passes for political speech these days. With passion, reason, and eloquence, Democracy's Discontent offers a powerful alternative to both a conservatism that disdains government and a liberalism that is skeptical of the search for common values. 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 and
  

  They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era

  "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.

Michael J. Sandel is Professor of Government, Harvard University, and the author of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.

Belknap Press
April
6 3/8 x 9 1/4 inches
448 pages
ISBN 0-674-19744-5
$24.95 / £15.95 cloth
Political Science/American History/Philosophy

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