Jane Addams And The Dream Of American Democracy

Today Jane Addams is one of those people whose name "rings a bell," writes biographer Jean Bethke Elshtain. At the time of her death in 1935, however, she was more than the answer to a trivia question--she was "America's best-known and most widely hailed female public figure." Addams had recently won the Nobel Peace Prize and was famous for her social work as the founder of Hull-House in Chicago. Elshtain's innovation is to treat Addams like the protofeminist intellectual she was, a thinker whose "vision of generosity and hopefulness ... made the American democracy more decent and more welcoming today than it would otherwise be." Hull-House, for instance, was not merely a poorhouse for immigrants struggling to become citizens; it was a major cultural center that hosted speeches and debates. Because of the many books Addams wrote (including the classic Twenty Years at Hull-House) and her political activism, "her name is attached to every major social reform between 1890 and 1925," writes Elshtain. Addams has deserved a book of this caliber for quite some time; readers drawn to her are fortunate that an intellectual figure of Elshtain's stature took up the project. As the author says of her subject near the end of Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: "Such a tremendous force." --John Miller