One of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year - A
National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist - A New York
Times Notable Book
A timely exploration of what Shakespeare's plays reveal about our
divided land.
"In this sprightly and enthralling book . . . Shapiro amply demonstrates
[that] for Americans the politics of Shakespeare are not confined to
the public realm, but have enormous relevance in the sphere of private
life." --The Guardian (London)
The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United
States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all
stripes--presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives
and liberals alike--have turned to Shakespeare's works to explore the
nation's fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to
the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled
role of Shakespeare's four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in
illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned.
From Abraham Lincoln's and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth's, competing
Shakespeare obsessions to the 2017 controversy over the staging of
Julius Caesar in Central Park, in which a Trump-like leader is
assassinated, Shakespeare in a Divided America reveals how no writer
has been more embraced, more weaponized, or has shed more light on the
hot-button issues in our history.
