At seventy-two years old, David M. Rubenstein remains curious and keeps asking questions. The billionaire co-founder of the Carlyle Group, the world's third largest private equity firm, is curious about American history and how that history helps define what being an American actually means. As an investor and philanthropist, Rubenstein is keenly interested in what motivates people and society to do hard things. And while he demurs from calling himself a journalist, on the David Rubenstein Show on Bloomberg News and History with David Rubenstein on PBS, Rubenstein has in recent years pursued a reporter-like thread through conversations exploring the myriad facets of American identity and how they are reflected in our business practices, the arts, our communities, and above all our civic life — that is, how we understand and exercise our rights and obligations as citizens.

The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream is Rubenstein's third collection of ideas and interviews exploring the nature of America. While many of these conversations occurred as early as 2017, several took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, some as recently as this summer, giving an existential sharpness and immediacy to Rubenstein's narrative. Rubenstein has been described as a patriotic philanthropist, notably footing the bill for improvements to the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial, among many other gifts. And in a very real sense, The American Experiment is an extension of that philanthropy; sharing his idea of America — his received wisdom — with an America fraught with immense challenges, but gifted with extraordinary opportunity.

In his two previous collections, The American Story (2019) in which he interviewed top historians about key figures in American history, and How to Lead (2020) in which he interviewed business, political, media, and sports luminaries to tease out the core elements that drive success, Rubenstein worked to find common themes — bridging time, experience, and outcomes — all to demonstrate that real success comes from asking the right questions, then acting on what you've learned. So too, with The American Experiment; Rubenstein is searching across history to ask: What is that thing that makes Americans American? Here you will find a wide range of interviews all with a common thread: Anything worth doing is hard. The interviews include: David Blight on Frederick Douglass's epiphany that literacy was power; Jon Meacham on John Lewis's lifelong work to secure voting rights; Jill Lepore on Phyllis Schlafly's underreported centrality to modern conservatism; Walter Isaacson on innovation as the secret sauce of American success; Douglas Brinkley on the space race and the matter-of-factness of Neil Armstrong; David McCullough on the self-taught, can-do genius of the Wright brothers, Wynton Marsalis on the importance of jazz as a uniquely American art; and Cal Ripken, Jr. on the meaning of never missing a baseball game.

These conversations, and many others in this volume, make for a compelling and easy read, and that alone would be enough to recommend the book. But Rubenstein's motivation is higher than just telling good stories about Americans past and present; The American Experiment serves as an earnest plea for Americans to recognize, embrace, and fight for the fundamental values we take for granted, never fully learned to appreciate, and seem all too easily to dismiss when they are not convenient. Dismayed by the tangled aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the events leading up to the 2021 inauguration — including the January 6 attack on the Capitol — and the continued polarization of American politics, public discourse, and community, Rubenstein wants to pull America out of the fire and remind his fellow citizens of what they have in common (what he describes as our American genes) and strengthen the bonds that — however imperfectly — have kept America together and carried millions to these shores for two and a half centuries. These core American values include: democracy, voting, equality, freedom of speech and of religion, the rule of law, the separation of powers, civilian control of the military, the peaceful transfer of power, capitalism, entrepreneurship, immigration, diversity, culture, and the American Dream. What may appear to some as a squishy amalgam of ideals is, for Rubenstein, the very essence of what it means to be an American. Never mind that Americans as individuals or as a community have and will continue to fall short of these values (or that many would dispute this list). At its core, the history of America is about the sorting out of these ideals.

Rubenstein's point is to pivot away from the cluttered and angry debates of the present and by example demonstrate how America's civic values can and should take center stage. To understand his embrace of civics as an article of faith, it's important to recall Rubenstein's own story. Raised in the glow of post-World War II American prosperity, this Jewish son of a Baltimore postal worker went to Duke University, made law review at Chicago Law School, served as counsel to the U.S. Senate subcommittee on constitutional amendments and then as a domestic policy advisor during the Carter administration – all by the age of 27. That Horatio Alger-like rise, to say nothing of his later success with the Carlyle Group, surely fuels Rubenstein's optimism for the American experiment.

Of course, it is fair to ask whether it is Pollyannaish in these troubled times to encourage us to turn to our better angels, to mine our history, and embrace a dialogue about rights and obligations as citizens. And it is disappointing that after Rubenstein begins almost professorially, outlining the theme of his civics course, laying out his examples, this volume lacks any concluding remarks. Or it may well be that Rubenstein has saved the best for last: an extended interview with Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, making a full-throated argument for putting civic education front and center in our schools and our communities. As Sotomayor explains: "Ignorance of what our laws mean, ignorance of what our society needs in terms of functioning and being vibrant, is our biggest problem.... Do you understand that to keep [America] healthy, to keep it flourishing, we have to work together? What civic involvement means is figuring out ways to work together to make a more perfect union." Sotomayor's comments end with what is, perhaps, Rubenstein's ultimate message: "You have to have perseverance and dedication and a sense of commitment to working hard, to doing things right." And it is a hard thing to get a supreme court justice — let alone anyone else — to articulate, clearly and succinctly, what you hope they will say, to sum up what you might have said; it is to Rubenstein's credit that he does it so well.

Daniel X Matz is foundation web development manager at Candid.