What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
A most anticipated book of 2022 at Vulture and Kirkus Reviews

A leading historian tells the story of the United States’ most enduring political party and its long, imperfect, and newly invigorated quest for ＂moral capitalism,＂ from Andrew Jackson to Joseph Biden.

The Democratic Party is the world’s oldest mass political organization. But what has the party stood for through the centuries, and how has it managed to succeed in elections and govern?

In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin tells the story of the party’s longtime commitment to promoting ＂moral capitalism,＂ a system that mixes entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers. Yet the party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or furthered the causes of slavery, segregation, and Native American removal. With its evolution toward a more inclusive, egalitarian vision, the party won durable victories for Americans of all backgrounds. But it has also struggled to hold together a majority coalition and advance a persuasive agenda.

Kazin traces the party’s fortunes through vivid character sketches of its key thinkers and doers, from William Jennings Bryan to Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama. Throughout, Kazin reveals the rich interplay of personality, belief, strategy, and policy that defines the life of the Democratic Party and outlines the core components of a political legacy that President Joe Biden and his co-partisans rely on today as they seek to revitalize the American political experiment.

Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor emeritus of Dissent. His books include American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, The Populist Persuasion, and A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and editor of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History