We the People: The Modern-Day Figures Who Have Reshaped and Affirmed the Founding Fathers' Vision of What America Is

In this blend of political history and biography, Fox News analyst Williams (Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate) marvels at how much America has changed since its founding. Attempting to explain how America has transformed, Williams calls for the creation of a new "Founding Family," a gallery of 20th-century figures central to the issues that define modern America: debates over gun control and environmentalism, the rise of the Religious Right, or the state of post%E2%80%93Civil Rights Era race relations. In the lively profiles that follow, Williams reaches across the aisle, embracing liberal and conservative heroes alike; on this new Mount Rushmore, one sees Milton Friedman and Edwin Meese alongside Betty Friedan and Jesse Jackson. But Williams's inclusive bipartisanship, however theoretically admirable, precludes practical critique and flattens nuance. When it comes to divisive issues%E2%80%94immigration, policing, labor unions, Robert Moses's urban planning%E2%80%94Williams tells readers that America has changed "for better or worse," as if all development is neutral and all of his subjects are worthy of celebration. In crafting his founding family, Williams misunderstands why Americans invoke the founding fathers in the first place: not because they created the nation, but because their ideals inspire citizens to forge a better one. Agent: Eric Lupfer, William Morris Endeavor. (Apr.)