Books and Democracy

From Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.” Within the very condensed library story I have been telling you recently about Thomas Jefferson, based on Dumas Malone’s “Jefferson and His Time,” there is this larger history about America’s birth and democracy itself. Biography can be a larger story whether the subject served history well or otherwise, as can be autobiography or memoir. I have two complementary case examples. First, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” Simon & Schuster, New York (2005). The title is self-explanatory about the central subject matter, Lincoln’s skillful pol…