March 23, 2025—Public historian Nancy Spannaus has just released her latest book, entitled From Subject to Citizen: What Americans Need to Know about Their Revolution. The 260-page volume, comprised primarily of articles from her blog AmericanSystemNow, takes on many of today’s misconceptions about the causes and content of the Revolution and the establishment on the U.S. Constitution.
The ebook version is currently available on Amazon at $5.00 a copy. The soft cover book, priced at $15, should be available by the end of the week.
“This book is written as a challenge to my fellow American citizens,” Spannaus states in her preface. She notes that many Americans today have become so disoriented by our failures to live up to our founding ideals that they trash our nation’s honorable origins, even to the point of wishing we never left the British Empire. Others pledge loyalty to our founding documents, but adopt a libertarian view that violates the foundation of our freedom.
She concludes: “These shortcomings in understanding our founding principles represent the real crisis for our republic, in my view. In my experience, most partisans on all sides of our current bitter political divide are woefully ignorant of many of the basics of our founding. They may be well-intentioned but are acting upon pure emotion, or ideological biases that have nothing to do with the actual history of our country. I want to do my part to resolve this crisis.”
In this short volume, readers will find 22 articles, grouped into four sections: 1) Revolutionary Fervor Grows; 2) The Declaration; 3) The Constitution; and 4) The Challenge. Some are quite short, and only a few quite extensive. Many are based on primary sources, especially from statesmen Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, addressing the significance of our founding documents and how our republic can be saved.
Americans preparing for the commemorations of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States should find this book particularly useful. Like her other recent books, Hamilton Versus Wall Street (2019) and Defeating Slavery (2023), From Subject to Citizen is written in a crisp journalistic style accessible to the general public. Readers can pick and choose among the articles in any order they wish. All will illuminate some aspect of the founding which will be enlightening and relevant to our crisis today.
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Tags: Abraham Lincoln, American Revolution, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Edward Spannaus, Frederick Douglass, Nancy Spannaus, republican institutions
