Democracy Café

In 1998, 'Civic ideals: Conflicting Visions of citizenship in U. S. History,' was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in History. If anything, the comprehensively insightful award-winning book -- authored by Rogers Smith, who until 2001 was Alfred Cowles Professor of Government at Yale University before then becoming the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science -- is more relevant today than ever. As Yale University Press, the publisher of 'Civic Ideals,' notes, it "traces political struggles over U.S. citizenship laws from the colonial period through the Progressive era and shows that throughout this time, most adults were legally denied access to full citizenship, including political rights, solely because of their race, ethnicity, or gender. Basic conflicts over these denials have driven political development and civic membership in the U.S., Smith argues. These conflicts are what truly define U.S. civic identity up to this day." And as Rogers Smiths shares in our thoughtful