The Right to Vote The Contested History of Democracy in the United States

The Right to Voteis the first comprehensive history of suffrage in the United States in more than eighty years. In this revised edition, Alexander Keyssar chronicles the surprisingly complex and slow evolution of the right to vote from the American Revolution to the present. Keyssar's account highlights the gap between the hallowed image of the United States as the democratic nation and the reality that it took nearly two centuries for universal suffrage to be achieved.The Right to Voteis a sweeping reinterpretation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

Alexander Keyssar is Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University. He is the author of Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts (A New York Times Notable Book for 1986) and has written essays and reviews for The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times, The New Republic, and a host of other popular and academic publications.