Awesome Gang

About Versatile Nation: How America’s Knack for Reinventing Itself Will Make Life Better After 2020

This book provides a rich, easy to read history of how the United States overcame crises and survived sweeping transformations in the past, an account sorely needed after the tumultuous year of 2020. 2020 forced many Americans to ask fundamental questions about our country: is it collapsing, are things falling apart, and why is there so much chaos? From the coronavirus outbreak which upended millions of lives to a summer filled with violent social unrest, 2020 had the biggest pandemic since 1918, the racial animosities of the 1960s, and the unemployment hardships of an economic depression all rolled into one. Topping it off was arguably the most contentious Presidential election in U.S. history which ended with a violent assault on our nation’s capital building. Though technically the capitol attack took place in January of 2021, it was vintage 2020. Americans began to wonder if the two hundred- and forty-six-year grand experiment in self-government might be coming to an end. There were no shortages of pundits and commentators who assured Americans the end was indeed nigh, but the good news is they were wrong, and history provides the proof of America’s versatility as a nation and ability to overcome monumental challenges. But the reasons why the United States survived and overcame past upheavals are not the ones commonly mythologized. It was not because we were a “chosen” people or because of a divine mandate.

Rather the United States as a nation proceeded through trial and error, both made by successive generations of flawed human beings. Greed, brute force, deception, and prejudice went right alongside flashes of insight, astounding feats of innovation, noble ideas, luck, hard work, and perseverance. Those who were most denied freedom still fought for those underlying ideals, making them the nations most profound champions. The underlying ideas of our nation were always nobler than the ordinary human beings who thought of them, and no generation has yet to fully live up to the highest aspirations set forth at the nation’s founding. Each generation has struggled to do better than their predecessors, to learn from earlier mistakes, sometimes succeeding while at others falling into the trap of repeating errors from the past. Versatile Nation tells the story of how America navigated tough times in past and came out stronger.

Our nation’s story is one of continual transformation, from a scattered group of colonies into a new coastal country, from a coastal country into a continent spanning nation, from a rural agrarian to an urban society, and from an isolated nation into a global superpower. We made economic, scientific, and social progress, but only after making many mistakes and committing injustices along the way. The United States has reinvented itself several times, and is already undergoing another reinvention in the aftermath of 2020. Like all transfromations before, this one promises to be a difficult journey, frought with danger and the potential for self-destruction. In the midst of such upheaval, watching like most people did the events of 2020 with a combination of horror and disbelief, I began to wonder, how did our country come through such periods before without tearing itself to pieces, and why were those periods often followed by fresh rounds of prosperity and innovation? By taking a fresh look at the events that transformed our nation in the past, I have tried to provide some credible answers that may offer hope while still being grounded in facts.

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