Hi all.

With this newsletter, I will try to make some sense of a political landscape that has descended into part Greek tragedy, part Three Stooges movie. 

The issues I write about could not be more serious, but much of what is occurring, especially on the Supreme Court and in Congress, is so steeped in hypocrisy and wrapped in opaque jargon that failure to untangle it imperils the future of democracy.  As a political and legal historian who has also been a taxi driver turned actor, in addition to stints as a member of two Wall Street trading firms, quiz show contestant, M&A specialist, and policy analyst at the Hudson Institute, I have seen the world through enough different lenses to have developed the skills to do it. Think of me as Toto in the Wizard of Oz, pulling back the curtain to expose the fake wizard behind it.

I’ve written almost a dozen books and numerous articles about American history, contemporary politics, and Constitutional law, two of which that have won prizes.  On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights won the 2022 Lillian Smith Book Award; Days of Infamy: How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese American Internment won the 2023 Carter G. Woodson Book Award. 

My aim has always been to broaden the assumptive boundaries within which truth is sought and so, my take on both American history and the Constitution has often been sufficiently original and controversial to irritate traditional scholars, which I take as a compliment.  But I have also been ahead of the curve in a number of areas, such as the Supreme Court being the third political branch of government, which I have been writing about for almost two decades. 

For more detail about either me or my work, my website is lawrencegoldstone.com.

Last—I am new at this so I welcome feedback…I think…and suggestions.