Red Emma’s

Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic attitudes across the political spectrum, journalist Osita Nwanevu has spent the Trump era examining the very meaning of democracy in search of answers to questions many have asked in the wake of the 2024 election: Are our institutions fundamentally broken? How can a country so divided govern itself? Does democracy even work as well as we believe?

_The Right of the People _offers us challenging answers: while democracy remains vital, American democracy is an illusion we must make real by transforming not only our political institutions but the American economy. In a text that spans democratic theory, the American Founding, our aging political system, and the dizzying inequalities of our new Gilded Age, Nwanevu makes a visionary case for a political and economic agenda to fulfill the promise of American democracy and revive faith in the American project.

“Nearly two hundred fifty years ago, the men who founded America made a fundamental break not just from their old country but from the past—casting off an order that had subjugated them with worn and weak ideas for the promise of true self-governance and greater prosperity in a new republic,” Nwanevu writes. “With exactly their sense of purpose and even higher, more righteous ambitions for America than they themselves had, we should do the same now⁠—work as hard as we can in the decades ahead to ‘institute new Government’ for the benefit of all and not just the few.”

“Nwanevu has a truly remarkable—almost unique—ability to distill a broad range of academic scholarship into a fully accessible argument of his own about the deficiencies of the present American constitutional system and the drastic need for fundamental reform and, indeed, a ‘New American Founding.’ This superb book deserves the widest possible readership—and, more to the point, ensuing discussion and political action generated by his incisive analysis.”—Sanford Levinson, author of Our Undemocratic Constitution

Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor for The New Republic and a columnist for The Guardian, writing about American politics and culture. He lives in Baltimore.

Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for The Nation and a contributing editor at The Baffler. He was formerly editor of The Baffler _and _The New Republic, and is the author, most recently, of The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream (Melville House, 2016).

Maximillian Alvarez is the Editor-in-Chief of The Real News Network and the host of Working People, “a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.” Prior to joining The Real News, he was an Associate Editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. His work has been featured in a range of outlets, including The Nation, In These Times, Boston Review, Truthout, and The Baffler. He has a book of interviews with OR Books, The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.