
American Covenant
How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again
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Narrated by:
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Leon Nixon
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By:
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Yuval Levin
About this listen
A top conservative scholar reveals the Constitution’s remarkable power to repair our broken civic culture, rescue our malfunctioning politics, and unify a fractious America
Common ground is hard to find in today’s politics. In a society teeming with irreconcilable political perspectives, many people have grown frustrated under a system of government that constantly demands compromise. More and more on both the right and the left have come to blame the Constitution for the resulting discord. But the Constitution is not the problem we face; it is the solution.
Blending engaging history with lucid analysis, conservative scholar Yuval Levin’s American Covenant recovers the Constitution’s true genius and reveals how it charts a path to repairing America’s fault lines. Uncovering the framers’ sophisticated grasp of political division, Levin showcases the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society. Clear-eyed about the ways that contemporary politics have malfunctioned, Levin also offers practical solutions for reforming those aspects of the constitutional order that have gone awry.
Hopeful, insightful, and rooted in the best of our political tradition, American Covenant celebrates the Constitution’s remarkable power to bind together a diverse society, reassuring us that a less divided future is within our grasp.
©2024 Yuval Levin (P)2024 Basic BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Because we Americans have forgotten how to disagree with one another, forgotten how to collaborate and compromise, Yuval Levin contends, in clear and persuasive prose, that the United States Constitution offers us a welcome framework for promoting our desperately needed national unity. Indeed, no one has ever explained so authoritatively and so judiciously the significance of the Constitution for the health of our civic life as Levin has in this brilliant book. It is an extraordinary achievement.”—Gordon Wood, author of The Creation of the American Republic
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Story
In The Extinction of Experience, Christine Rosen investigates the cultural and emotional shifts that accompany our embrace of technology. In warm, philosophical prose, Rosen reveals key human experiences at risk of going extinct, including face-to-face communication, sense of place, authentic emotion, and even boredom. Considering cultural trends, like TikTok challenges and mukbang, and politically unsettling phenomena, like sociometric trackers and online conspiracy culture, Rosen exposes an unprecedented shift in the human condition, one that habituates us to alienation and control.
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Christine is great
- By darren on 11-24-24
By: Christine Rosen
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The Conservative Sensibility
- By: George F. Will
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 24 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist's "astonishing" and "enthralling" New York Times best seller and Notable Book about how the Founders' belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition (Booklist) - "easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written" (Jonah Goldberg).
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Conservativism explained and in practice
- By kevinf on 06-13-19
By: George F. Will
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Wanting
- The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life
- By: Luke Burgis
- Narrated by: Luke Burgis, Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful - yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies.
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One of the most important books you'll ever read
- By chris boutte on 06-14-21
By: Luke Burgis
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Liberal Fascism
- The Secret History of the American Left
- By: Jonah Goldberg
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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"Fascists", "Brownshirts", "jackbooted stormtroopers" - such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
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Great book
- By Mark on 05-10-08
By: Jonah Goldberg
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Stuck
- How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of American Opportunity
- By: Yoni Appelbaum
- Narrated by: Ari Fliakos
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In this illuminating debut, Yoni Appelbaum, historian and journalist for The Atlantic, shows us that this idea has been under attack since reformers first developed zoning laws to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California. The century of legal segregation that ensued—from the zoning laws enacted to force Jewish workers back into New York’s Lower East Side to the private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in Flint, Michigan to Jane Jacobs’ efforts to protect her vision of the West Village.
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land of opportunity
- By Anonymous User on 03-16-25
By: Yoni Appelbaum
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Dominion
- How the Christian Revolution Remade the World
- By: Tom Holland
- Narrated by: Tom Holland, Mark Meadows
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How astonishing it was, then, that people should have come to believe that one particular victim of crucifixion - an obscure provincial by the name of Jesus - was to be worshipped as a god. Dominion explores the implications of this shocking conviction as they have reverberated throughout history.
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Only the forward is narrated by Holland.
- By Honora on 06-16-20
By: Tom Holland
Required reading
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Profound.
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An absolute must read for haters of "the other side" and for everyone else.
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Great discussion of the founders ideas in writing the constitution
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Phenomenal
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Thoroughly educational
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Through the use of Madison's Convention Notes, the Federalist Papers and other sources the author laid out in great detail intentions or purposes of the individuals who contributed to our Constitution creation.
He combined these sources of information with his thoughts throughout the book's chapters in an organized and deliberate manner. In doing so laid out his convincing arguments for structural institutional changes needed to rebuild unity, trust, and social cohesion. He provides the necessary supportive evidence guiding those arguments evolution and final conclusions
This being the civic discourse and engagement to seek changes for the continuation of our founder's great experiment in self-government of a just society.
The Act of Unity and Trust to Keep Our Sacred Covenant
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Unity in Problem-Solving
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Disagree Better
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This book is timely and directly on point for today’s raucous political environment. It’s “calm down” hands from a trusted source.
In this book Yuval is, for lack of a better comparison, Charley Steiner in the classic ESPN Y2K commercial, necktie around his forehead and lamp in hand, shouting “Follow me! Follow me to freedom!”
The path back to political sanity
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