From Danielle Allen—Harvard professor, leading political thinker, and candidate for the Governor of Massachusetts—an invaluable playbook for meeting our current moment and a stirring reflection on the future of democracy itself. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated some of the strengths of our society, including the rapid development of vaccines. But it has also exposed our glaring weaknesses, including government failure to develop and quickly implement strategies for tracing and containing outbreaks, as well as widespread public distrust of government prompted by often confusing and conflicting choices—to mask, or not to mask. Even worse, millions of deaths and economic devastation worldwide might have been avoided if governments had been prepared to undertake comprehensive, contextually-sensitive policies to stop the spread of the disease. Looking specifically at the United States’ COVID-19 victories and failures but providing insight for nations across the globe, Danielle Allen offers a plan for creating a more resilient democratic polity—one that can better respond to both the present pandemic and future crises. In an analysis spanning from ancient Greece to the Reconstruction Amendments and the present day, Allen argues for the effectiveness of our federalist system when we emphasize collaboration among local, state, and national governments, and for the unifying power of a common cause. But for democracy to endure, we—as participatory citizens—must commit to that cause: a just and equal social contract that leaves no one out and support for good governance.

“A trenchant call for reimagining how America functions in a time of crisis.”
— Publishers Weekly

Danielle Allen is the James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, where she is also the principal investigator for the Democratic Knowledge Project. Among her many books, she is the author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality and, most recently, coeditor of Difference without Domination: Pursuing Justice in Diverse Democracies, the latter also published by the University of Chicago Press. Allen is currently on leave from Harvard and running to be the next Governor of Massachusetts. She received her M.Phil. and Ph.D in Classics from King’s College, University of Cambridge, in 1994 and 1996 respectively.