In this analytical call-to-action, former U.S. attorney general Holder charts the history of voter discrimination. Noting that since the Supreme Court "gutted" the Voting Rights Act in 2013, more than two dozen states "have instituted draconian anti-voting laws that clearly and intentionally have a disproportionate impact on communities of color," Holder documents disagreements among the Founders over whether to "expand the franchise" to propertyless whites, and details the progress and reversal of Black voting rights after the Civil War and the campaign for women's suffrage. According to Holder, the election of the nation's first Black president in 2008 provoked efforts by Republican lawmakers ("aware that their agenda did not align with the interests of a majority of Americans") to make it harder to vote. Holder also delves into Donald Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election and details how recent state laws have made it harder to vote by mail and criminalized giving water and food to voters waiting in line to cast their ballots. His proposals for fixing the problem include automatic voter registration and passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Lucid history lessons and concrete solutions make this an essential primer on a hot-button political issue. (May)

Civil rights leader and former U.S. attorney general Holder, with coauthor Koppelman (coauthor of Impeach: The Case against Donald Trump, 2019), examines historic and current challenges to voting rights in the U.S. Drawing on this country's history of disenfranchisement, Holder details how voting rights began with white, landowning men and were expanded to women and Black Americans through struggle, perseverance, and violence. Based on his direct experiences as the first Black U.S. attorney general, working under the first Black U.S. president, Holder describes the ongoing threats against U.S. democracy and, responding to policy changes leading to voter suppression, argues for new protective measures and processes to safeguard and expand voting rights for millions of Americans. Readers will find important, compelling episodes in U.S. history and politics, along with hope for the future in the form of the opportunities Holder outlines for challenging voter suppression and other threats to our democracy.

The former attorney general lays out the extraordinary challenges minority voters face with Republican efforts at voter suppression. As Holder notes, we are in the midst of "a crisis unlike any we've faced since the signing of the Voting Rights Act [of 1965]: American democracy is on the brink of collapse." Blame it on an intransigent GOP that has set up roadblocks to voting and installed gerrymandered safe districts across the country. Blame it on Barack Obama, too--or, better, attribute the GOP's concerted efforts on the party's fear of a Black president and determination never to let another Black candidate gain that office. At the same time, many GOP operatives are working not just to suppress minority votes, but also to ensure that the next coup succeeds, "rigging our democracy in their favor." Like many critics, Holder, whose title derives from the civil rights march in Alabama that resulted in the Voting Rights Act, considers the Electoral College an enemy of democracy. He also finds fault in the superannuated, super-White, superwealthy Senate and in the "minoritarian rulings" of the Supreme Court, made possible in some measure because of the Republicans' blocking of Merrick Garland's appointment to the bench and subsequent installation of Amy Coney Barrett, "the kind of hypocrisy that makes the American people hate politics." Holder writes critically, but he also offers a positive program for change that insists that only by popular actions, such as voter drives and demands for electoral fairness on the part of elected officials, will that change come. It can be done, he adds; part of the work is over the long haul, exemplified by the decades it took women to earn the right to vote, to say nothing of Black and Native American constituencies. Another part is the kind of direct action that recently forced the Texas legislature to withdraw the most retrograde provisions of a packet of voter-suppression measures. A powerful defense of democracy coupled with a thoughtful survey of the struggle for civil rights. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.