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As we experience one of the most tumultuous election years in American history, join us for a talk with Michael Kazin who will provide us a broader historical context of how the Democratic Party — the oldest mass party in the world - has contended for power over the past two centuries. Michael is one the leading historians of the American political system. Michael's talk will be drawn from his recent book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party. The book was an Editor’s Choice of the New York Times and was named by Kirkus as one of the ten best books on U.S. history published in 2022. Michael will discuss how the aims and methods of Democrats have evolved, inevitably. But one theme has endured: they have insisted that the economy should benefit the ordinary working person, whether farmer or wage earner, and that governments should institute policies to make that possible—and to resist those that did not. When they ceased to emphasize that theme, they usually lost.

Michael Kazin is a professor of history at Georgetown University and editor emeritus of Dissent magazine. He is the author of seven books and the editor of three. He is also editor-in-chief of The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History (2010). Kazin is a former on-line columnist for The New Republic and has written articles and reviews for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The New York Review of Books and many other periodicals and websites. He is currently writing What Labor Wants: Samuel Gompers and the Rise of American Unionism.