The Embattled Vote in America
eBook - PDF

The Embattled Vote in America

From the Founding to the Present

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Embattled Vote in America

From the Founding to the Present

About this book

"A sweeping look at the history of voting rights in the U.S."—Vox

Who has the right to vote? And who benefits from exclusion?

For most of American history, the right to vote has been a privilege restricted by wealth, sex, race, and literacy. Economic qualifications were finally eliminated in the nineteenth century, but the ideal of a white man's republic persisted long after that. Women and racial minorities had to fight hard and creatively to secure their voice, but voter identification laws, registration requirements, and voter purges continue to prevent millions of American citizens from voting.

An award-winning historian and voting right activist, Allan Lichtman gives us the history behind today's headlines. He shows that political gerrymandering and outrageous attempts at voter suppression have been a fixture of American democracy—but so have efforts to fight back and ensure that every citizen's voice be heard.

"Lichtman uses history to contextualize the fix we're in today. Each party gropes for advantage by fiddling with the franchise… Growing outrage, he thinks, could ignite demands for change. With luck, this fine history might just help to fan the flame."
—New York Times Book Review

"The great value of Lichtman's book is the way it puts today's right-wing voter suppression efforts in their historical setting. He identifies the current push as the third crackdown on African-American voting rights in our history."
—Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books

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Yes, you can access The Embattled Vote in America by Allan J. Lichtman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Introduction: Voters and Nonvoters
  8. 1. The Founding Fathers’ Mistake
  9. 2. A White Man’s Republic
  10. 3. Constructing and Deconstructing the Vote
  11. 4. Votes for Women
  12. 5. The Absent Voter
  13. 6. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
  14. 7. The New Wars over the Vote
  15. 8. Reforming American Voting
  16. Conclusion: The Embattled Vote
  17. Notes
  18. Acknowledgments
  19. Index