One would certainly be excused if they did a double take when seeing John Dewey listed as the author of a new book in 2021. But one's initial surprise is rewarded upon further examination of this recent edited collection of some of Dewey's many short public writings. Specifically, this new volume is edited and introduced by Eric Thomas Weber, who is a Dewey scholar and public intellectual at the University of Kentucky. In his Introduction, written during the turbulent Trump years, Weber rightly notes the dispirited age in which we live, and thinks Dewey offers intellectual and cultural resources to nourish the contemporary American soul. As Weber says: It is hard to find a basis for hope in the world today . . . Americans today desperately need guidance in intellectual and moral leadership. As I hope this book will make clear, John Dewey was an exemplary public philosopher who sought to provide Americans and lovers of democracy around the world with a vision for living intelligently and creatively together. Dewey's work can help us find a basis for hope about democracy and education even in troubled times. (1–2)In seeking to fulfill this need for a hopeful vision, Weber employed three criteria in selecting from among Dewey's many short essays: first, they must be accessible for general readers; second, they must be relevant for contemporary issues; and third, they must be some of Dewey's “best examples of clear philosophical thinking that reveals the importance of philosophy for life and policy” (9). Based on these criteria, Weber gathers forty-six of Dewey's writings and organizes them into six thematic sections: Democracy and the United States; Politics and Power; Education; Social Ethics and Economic Justice; Science and Society; and Philosophy and Culture. Prior to each essay, Weber offers a brief and helpful introduction that gives the original date of publication, describes its initial context, and seeks to outline its contemporary relevance.As one takes stock of Dewey's import for the twenty-first century, one is reminded of his abiding insight that democracy is deeply cultural and not mechanistic. Put simply, elections are not the underlying basis of democracy, rather they are the essential outward expression of it. For example, historians will look back on the first decades of this century and take note of America's massive miscalculation, fueled by neoconservative assumptions and hopes, that democracy could forcibly be exported to countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of us, for instance, who publicly warned in advance against the error of invading Iraq, nonetheless still held hopes that the American overthrow of the Taliban could lead to some future flowering of freedom and democracy for the women and children of Afghanistan. However, as evidenced in this new volume, Dewey would have dispelled such sanguine hopes. As he wrote in 1936: “The idea of forcing men to be free is an old idea, but by nature it is opposed to freedom. Freedom is not something that can be handed to men as a gift from outside . . . . It is something which can be had only as individuals participate in winning it, and this fact, rather than some particular political mechanism, is the essence of democratic liberalism” (111). This is not to say that Dewey would oppose the global spread of the seeds of democratic ideals; quite the contrary. But he would recognize that they could take root only slowly and in receptive cultural soil, needing long cultivation. As he again writes in this same 1936 essay: The democratic method of social change is slow; it labors under many and serious handicaps imposed by the undemocratic character of what passes for democracy. But it is the method of liberalism, with its belief that liberty is the means as well as the goal and that only through the development of individuals in their voluntary cooperation with one another can the development of individuality be made secure and enduring. (111)As Dewey touches upon here, you cannot separate means from ends: you cannot bring about a goal of freedom by coercive means. Thus, as he unequivocally states in a 1935 essay in which he critiques both communism and fascism, “The kind of means used, determines the kind of consequences actually reached” (114).Dewey's abiding insights about democracy are not only valuable for thinking realistically about its global prospects, but also for assessing our own troubled domestic situation. For Dewey rightly recognized that democracy is not a one and done achievement, but rather is an ongoing task of educational, generational, and cultural renewal. Indeed, Dewey insists that democracy is a moral ideal that must take root as a personal way of life among citizens in order for it to become actualized at all. In a 1939 essay entitled “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us,” Dewey observes that we have had the habit of thinking of democracy as a kind of political mechanism that will work as long as citizens [are] reasonably faithful in performing political duties . . . . [W]e can escape from this external way of thinking only as we realize in thought and act that democracy is a personal way of individual life; that it signifies the possession and continual use of certain attitudes, forming personal character and determining desire and purpose in all the relations of life. Instead of thinking of our own dispositions and habits as accommodated to certain institutions we have to [instead] learn to think of the [institutions] as expressions, projections and extensions of habitually dominant personal attitudes (62).As Dewey reveals here, the mistaken and dangerous assumption in modern American life has been that democracy is a fixed and external mechanism always there, like a reliable car sitting in the driveway waiting to be used every two or four years. But, as Dewey correctly points out, this is totally backwards. Democracy is not an external thing; rather, it exists at all only to the extent that it is an outward expression of our inner character as a people. Recall the old adage: garbage in, garbage out; undemocratic habits lead to undemocratic acts. The Trump-inspired insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a prime example of undemocratic habits leading to undemocratic actions. In order to save and restore democracy, America needs to take Dewey's words to heart and realize that democracy is a moral ideal involving cooperation and problem solving that must be continually cultivated in the habits of citizens—from cradle to grave. In Dewey's words from this same essay, “democracy as a way of life is controlled by personal faith in personal day-to-day working together with others. Democracy is the belief that even when needs and ends or consequences are different for each individual, the habit of amicable cooperation—which may include, as in sport, rivalry and competition—is itself a priceless addition to life” (64). The competition of elections and the peaceful transfer of power only succeed, Dewey rightly observes, when there is a deeply ingrained habit of “amicable cooperation” among the people. Sports teach us that whether we win or lose, we respect the game, the opponent, and the outcome. What happened in the U.S. Presidential Election in 2020, however, is that President Donald Trump and his supporters no longer respected the process of democracy, the political opponent, or the outcome of the election. In short, without the necessary personal habits of amicable cooperation, there is no democracy.One further Deweyan insight must be noted. The moral ideal of democracy entails aiming at the concrete embodiment of E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many One. “The task of democracy,” Dewey declares, “is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane experience in which all share and to which all contribute” (65). This is the underlying aim of government of, by, and for the people. Dewey recognizes that education, especially public education, is a critical vehicle for fostering this democratic habit, otherwise, the powerful tendencies and forces of private interests, tribalism, and factionalism will swamp any hopes of democracy. As he writes in a 1916 essay on education, “What has the American public school done toward subordinating a local, provincial, sectarian and partisan spirit of mind . . . ? For unless the agencies which form the mind and morals of the community can prevent the operation of those forces which are always making for a division of interests, class and sectional ideas and feelings will become dominant, and our democracy will fall to pieces” (150). One fears that contemporary America is being swamped by the forces of tribalism and factionalism, via social media, talk radio, and cable news. “Our unity,” Dewey insists, “cannot be a homogeneous thing like that of the separate states of Europe . . . ; it must [rather] be a unity created by drawing out and composing into a harmonious whole the best, the most characteristic which each contributing race and people has to offer” (151). In brief, democracy must aim at fostering creative unity-in-diversity; otherwise, as Dewey reckons, it falls to pieces.Along with these nuggets of wisdom pertaining to democracy, this volume also contains illuminating brief essays revealing Dewey's views pertaining to science, evolution, economics, pragmatism, metaphysics, education, culture, and ethics. One also catches implied glimpses of Dewey's debates with thinkers such as Reinhold Niebuhr over issues of peace and war, and moral realism versus idealism. Overall, this unexpected but valuable new volume is worth its affordable price just for its timely contribution to helping us think with Dewey about the present and future of that precious and fragile endeavor known as democracy.