Meacham articulates the mission statement of his book: to revisit periods of US history when the politics of hope prevailed over the politics of fear. Given the author’s perception of the United States in 2018 as a country torn apart by extremism, nativism, and racism, he hopes that a study of similarly divisive eras may help present-day Americans embrace anew “the better angels of our nature” (6), in the words of Abraham Lincoln. If nothing else, Meacham hopes that by illustrating moments when hope and reason triumphed over fear and madness, he can reassure readers that America’s best qualities can once again prevail over its worst.

Due to the outsized power and influence of the office, the presidency is the primary vector by which the tone of the nation is set, according to the author. In identifying the chief impetus for writing the book, Meacham points to Donald Trump’s rhetoric following the murder of Heather Heyer, a counterprotester killed at 2017’s Unite the Right white supremacist and neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Rather than offer a full-throated condemnation of the group’s organizers, Trump characterized the rally as an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides” (4).