Sean Wilentz, "The Politicians and the Egalitarians"

With books ranging from studies of Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant to The Age of Reagan and Bob Dylan in America, Wilentz is one of the country’s most diverse historians. The George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton, Wilentz won the Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy and the American Historical Association’s Beveridge Award for Chants Democratic; American politics is his specialty, and in his eighth book he reassesses the role political parties have played in this country’s quest for socio-economic equality. Showing that party politicians have been instrumental in furthering egalitarian goals, Wilentz draws lessons from the Civil War to the New Deal and on to the Great Society to argue that a post-partisan age would not guarantee our fundamental goals.

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