American Citizenship

“Shklar has produced a compelling argument that the right to vote and the right to a job, neither of which was written into the Constitution, are nevertheless necessary for full and equal American citizenship.”—Washington Monthly

“A short but very potent exploration of the actual meaning of citizenship for Americans… A spirited defense of the highly privatized vision of politics which is certainly the norm in America.”—International Journal of Comparative Sociology

“As always, one learns from reading Shklar… The book provides an excellent interpretation of what American citizenship has meant historically.”—Political Science Quarterly

“Professor Shklar’s book is powerful and profound. She presents an argument that is, in many respects, original. That is, once you take in what Shklar is saying, you wonder why no one else had said it before: it is right, it is illuminating, it had been waiting to be said, it emphatically needs saying. The book is wonderful and rare.”—George Kateb, Princeton University

“The thesis of Judith Shklar’s American Citizenship is strong, freshly original, completely persuasive—good sense raised to a higher power… It is a deceptively modest small work which achieves large things… Shklar’s book will receive an enormous amount of well-deserved attention, for she has a genius for doing what Hegel was so supremely good at: ‘capturing’ the ethos of a nation and an age with utter persuasive precision.”—Patrick Riley, University of Wisconsin–Madison