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The Public Square
Renewal: From Crisis to Transformation in Our Lives, Work, and Politics
From the acclaimed author of Unfinished Business , a story of crisis and change that can help us find renewed honesty and purpose in our personal and political lives
Like much of the world, America is deeply divided over identity, equality, and history. Renewal is Anne-Marie Slaughter’s candid and deeply personal account of how her own odyssey opened the door to an important new understanding of how we as individuals, organizations, and nations can move backward and forward at the same time, facing the past and embracing a new future.
Weaving together personal stories and reflections with insights from the latest research in the social sciences, Slaughter recounts a difficult time of self‐examination and growth in the wake of a crisis that changed the way she lives, leads, and learns. She connects her experience to our national crisis of identity and values as the country looks into a four-hundred-year-old mirror and tries to confront and accept its full reflection. The promise of the Declaration of Independence has been hollow for so many for so long. That reckoning is the necessary first step toward renewal. The lessons here are not just for America. Slaughter shows how renewal is possible for anyone who is willing to see themselves with new eyes and embrace radical honesty, risk, resilience, interdependence, grace, and vision.
Part personal journey, part manifesto, Renewal offers hope tempered by honesty and is essential reading for citizens, leaders, and the change makers of tomorrow.
Like much of the world, America is deeply divided over identity, equality, and history. Renewal is Anne-Marie Slaughter’s candid and deeply personal account of how her own odyssey opened the door to an important new understanding of how we as individuals, organizations, and nations can move backward and forward at the same time, facing the past and embracing a new future.
Weaving together personal stories and reflections with insights from the latest research in the social sciences, Slaughter recounts a difficult time of self‐examination and growth in the wake of a crisis that changed the way she lives, leads, and learns. She connects her experience to our national crisis of identity and values as the country looks into a four-hundred-year-old mirror and tries to confront and accept its full reflection. The promise of the Declaration of Independence has been hollow for so many for so long. That reckoning is the necessary first step toward renewal. The lessons here are not just for America. Slaughter shows how renewal is possible for anyone who is willing to see themselves with new eyes and embrace radical honesty, risk, resilience, interdependence, grace, and vision.
Part personal journey, part manifesto, Renewal offers hope tempered by honesty and is essential reading for citizens, leaders, and the change makers of tomorrow.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published September 21, 2021
20 people are currently reading
344 people want to read
About the author
Anne-Marie Slaughter
35 books173 followersAnne-Marie Slaughter is currently the President and CEO of New America, a think tank and civic enterprise with offices in Washington and New York. She is also the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009–2011 she served as director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position.
Dr. Slaughter has written or edited several books, including Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World (2017), Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family (2015), The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World (2007) and A New World Order (2004). Dr. Slaughter is a Contributing Editor to the Financial Times and writes a bi-monthly column for Project Syndicate .
She is married to Professor Andrew Moravcsik; they live in Princeton with their two sons. You can follow her on Twitter: @SlaughterAM.
Dr. Slaughter has written or edited several books, including Chessboard and the Web: Strategies of Connection in a Networked World (2017), Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family (2015), The Idea That Is America: Keeping Faith with Our Values in a Dangerous World (2007) and A New World Order (2004). Dr. Slaughter is a Contributing Editor to the Financial Times and writes a bi-monthly column for Project Syndicate .
She is married to Professor Andrew Moravcsik; they live in Princeton with their two sons. You can follow her on Twitter: @SlaughterAM.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 6, 2021
I thought that this was a great way to articulate the way forward for this country. I have worked with people from New America before and have come to expect the freshest ideas and the most well-thought-out policy concepts. What made this book stand apart is that Anne-Marie leveraged the context of her own professional renewal (a story I had not heard before) to lay the foundation for the conversations that need to be had nationally. I will definitely read it a second time.
March 4, 2024
TLDR: This book wouldn't exist by this author if author took their own advice.
The good info contained here is found more succinctly and better stated elsewhere.
The rest of the book (the majority, I think) feels like a "please think I'm a good person" text.
The non TLDR:
It was okay but the book didn't need to be made so, one star.
There *is* useful information in there.... but, you gotta dig for it.
So, let's "run towards" the criticism, shall we (for those who haven't read the book yet - she keeps saying that we need to run towards the criticism).
The premise: Author (well off cis, straight, white, boomer lady) is discussing "renewal" (defined as "make new, fresh, or strong again" and author explains that we want to look back and keep the good, and fix the bad).
Great idea! If executed well this will legitimately be a book that is revolutionary.
Unfortunately, it wasn't executed well. The hypocrisy is painful.
Disclaimer (I'm a biased gremlin): At this point in my life I am usually skeptical of books in this genre written by well off white folks because, frankly, they tend to be self-aggrandizing ("I am so much better than I once was cause I learned that [insert minority group] have it hard" or because they're amazingly successful or some such).
In the intro author tells us that she's going to use her journey to explain how it all echoes through to the federal. Okay, I'm nervous but I'm willing to try because I'm interested in what this professor of international affairs has to say about how we can help nations move forward from bad things.
There wasn't enough of the linking to national.
If I were to cynically summarize the book: "I went through a fairly self-inflicted tough time and my mentors and network kept me safe and sure not everybody has those opportunities but we can totally use this knowledge to help the country, I won't say how, but it's good stuff I swear and ignore that I'm not actually following any of my own advice." ... It's painful at times.
The author does an okay job in the intro of acknowledging that "we" is often used by the powerful to mean their group, and heck to others who don't fit their expectations. Well done there.
Then she says that the book is for women, but also men and then talks about how liberal she is *and completely ignores that there's more than 2 genders* - later on you will see her refer to people who aren't on the binary so she knows they exist. It made me wonder if it was a purposeful slight or some such, given that this is only the intro and I don't know her but also she just side-stepped a significant portion of the population - a member of whom is their research assistant.
"[F]or to transform themselves, organizations, communities, and entire societies need to do the same things that individuals must do. They must face both the past and present with radical, even brutal honesty. Yet they must also preserve what is worth preserving."
Nice.
This is a huge point in the book, and is repeated in some form ad nauseum - with no actual explanation of what that looks like personally or nationally. Nor is there any accountability from author on how she does that in her company.
She also talks about how she was told by a mentor that she is her mentor's thunder (therefore mentors should lift up their mentees) and there are *several* stories of her being told that she wasn't kept on for a job or was looked at with skepticism from those under her explicitly because she doesn't provide opportunities for others - she'll take them for herself. And yet she's writing this book. Why not co-author it with somebody who is marginalized? She talks about how white people don't have the same risks non-whites do, and yet she took the time and resources to write a book without thinking that maybe the authorship could go to somebody who actually sees what needs renewing? I'm skeptical that she holds the key to a better future at this point. This is quickly becoming a therapy book for author to explain how she isn't the baddy and we should invest in her cause she knows what to do.
In her acknowledgements at the end she IDs her research assistant who, by name and pronouns, probably has less privilege than her - and then says that one day they'll be writing a book. Oh my friggin head. Why didn't you just support that person?
This book could have been amazing if she'd taken one of her non-white friends (or even better, not a friend in her rough privilege circle but somebody who genuinely could use the status boost) to write most of it and then she has a paragraph each chapter basically saying "boom yes".
Author legitimately has some great one liners.
But
She herself acknowledges at some point that she can't speak for those whose experiences she doesn't understand properly and yet there's this whole book that I'm reading. Speaking for others whose situation you don't understand isn't okay - adding your voice to say "I agree and this is the responsibility for white folks to take on in response to this call to action" would be something actually different in the field of these books and would have made the impact of this book relevant.
There's just so, so much talk about how she knows she's privileged - and absolutely no acknowledgement of what fixing the dis-privilege that others face (as a direct result of her actions sometimes) looks like.
She actually talks about how at one point when she was writing a statement about racism and whatnot she was called in by somebody to ask if it was going to be a generic "racism is out there and bad and scary" or if it would actually acknowledge the racism in the organization. She felt this was revolutionary knowledge, and... never applied it to herself or if she should write a book on what America needs?
She talks about how the care society needs is not just physical care, but a relationship, and then takes sole authorship on a book that she had a research assistant for.
"Hearing that rage and accepting it is not the same as taking action against the conditions that produce it. But it is a first and necessary step, one that all of us can take." (p 78)
Somebody who is in that first stage shouldn't be writing a book on how we can get to a better place.
Marginalized folks have been "heard" for centuries, we want action.
If you haven't actioned, please don't take up space from those who have. Action yourself before bragging about how great you are, please.
"We cannot avoid a reckoning. In the speech he gave in 1990 on "Personal Renewal," John Gardner told his audience: "The individual intent on self-renewal will have to deal with ghosts of the past - the memory of earlier failures, the remnants of childhood dramas and rebellions, accumulated grievances and resentments that have long outlived their cause."" (p 94)
Okay? So what does this look like? Notta. Also, why aren't you taking all the stories you just told me about how you've been told to lift others up more, and maybe lift somebody up?
Finally, in this summary of things that irked me, she talks about "Native Americans descended from thee tribes and nations that once inhabited the land where they sit". Yo, if we're still alive we're still our nation. After all this talk about BLM and whatnot, has she honestly put in 0 effort into understanding what the Indigenous peoples that reside on what-is-currently-called-America want? Who the Indigenous peoples are? Or are Indigenous peoples just a nice end point to nod to and then move on from. This gaff could be excusable if a) she wasn't CEO of a thinktank about how to make America better again and b) she wasn't writing a book on how to fix America. But she is.
I am going to leave off on a couple paragraphs that I do like, though I find mildly bitter/ironic from somebody who at this stage seems to only want to do work if it is to boost her own image:
"Grace at the national level is much more complex. I am not suggesting that people who have been on the receiving end of systemic racism and injustice for decades and centuries should simply extend grace to the perpetrators of that injustice, past and present. The nation needs what Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow", calls a "process of racial reckoning" in schools, neighborhoods, and communities across the land. That work - of educating ourselves, forging a common consciousness, and allying for change - falls on white people.
I am, however, advocating some patience with the learning process, learning that is an indispensable part of renewal. Those Americans who want to undertake this work, who have finally been shocked into awareness of the deeply unjust reality that so many of our fellow Americans live with daily, do not need or merit praise. We are bound to stumble, however, and to make mistakes in trying to have difficult conversations or to overcome blind spots. I hope that those whom we unwittingly offend can give us enough grace to allow us to continue the journey."
With the affluence that I think author has, she could do something like a) pay somebody to teach her, b) organizing groups where people practice not being giant jerk bags, c) have accountability meetings with fellow white ladies where they list off the things they're doing and people can say "should you really be doing that" d) etc.
She doesn't need to gaff to marginalized people and then whine in a book about how those people quietly went to their peers to complain about how somebody in power made fun of them and state that they should have just told her she was being a jerk. Yes, tell your boss who is saying horrible things to you that they're saying horrible things about your marginalization, that's safe.
It rings hollow to hear that she wants to do this work when she so clearly isn't. It also makes me doubt that she has any solutions that are viable that haven't come directly from somebody who isn't her.
The good info contained here is found more succinctly and better stated elsewhere.
The rest of the book (the majority, I think) feels like a "please think I'm a good person" text.
The non TLDR:
It was okay but the book didn't need to be made so, one star.
There *is* useful information in there.... but, you gotta dig for it.
So, let's "run towards" the criticism, shall we (for those who haven't read the book yet - she keeps saying that we need to run towards the criticism).
The premise: Author (well off cis, straight, white, boomer lady) is discussing "renewal" (defined as "make new, fresh, or strong again" and author explains that we want to look back and keep the good, and fix the bad).
Great idea! If executed well this will legitimately be a book that is revolutionary.
Unfortunately, it wasn't executed well. The hypocrisy is painful.
Disclaimer (I'm a biased gremlin): At this point in my life I am usually skeptical of books in this genre written by well off white folks because, frankly, they tend to be self-aggrandizing ("I am so much better than I once was cause I learned that [insert minority group] have it hard" or because they're amazingly successful or some such).
In the intro author tells us that she's going to use her journey to explain how it all echoes through to the federal. Okay, I'm nervous but I'm willing to try because I'm interested in what this professor of international affairs has to say about how we can help nations move forward from bad things.
There wasn't enough of the linking to national.
If I were to cynically summarize the book: "I went through a fairly self-inflicted tough time and my mentors and network kept me safe and sure not everybody has those opportunities but we can totally use this knowledge to help the country, I won't say how, but it's good stuff I swear and ignore that I'm not actually following any of my own advice." ... It's painful at times.
The author does an okay job in the intro of acknowledging that "we" is often used by the powerful to mean their group, and heck to others who don't fit their expectations. Well done there.
Then she says that the book is for women, but also men and then talks about how liberal she is *and completely ignores that there's more than 2 genders* - later on you will see her refer to people who aren't on the binary so she knows they exist. It made me wonder if it was a purposeful slight or some such, given that this is only the intro and I don't know her but also she just side-stepped a significant portion of the population - a member of whom is their research assistant.
"[F]or to transform themselves, organizations, communities, and entire societies need to do the same things that individuals must do. They must face both the past and present with radical, even brutal honesty. Yet they must also preserve what is worth preserving."
Nice.
This is a huge point in the book, and is repeated in some form ad nauseum - with no actual explanation of what that looks like personally or nationally. Nor is there any accountability from author on how she does that in her company.
She also talks about how she was told by a mentor that she is her mentor's thunder (therefore mentors should lift up their mentees) and there are *several* stories of her being told that she wasn't kept on for a job or was looked at with skepticism from those under her explicitly because she doesn't provide opportunities for others - she'll take them for herself. And yet she's writing this book. Why not co-author it with somebody who is marginalized? She talks about how white people don't have the same risks non-whites do, and yet she took the time and resources to write a book without thinking that maybe the authorship could go to somebody who actually sees what needs renewing? I'm skeptical that she holds the key to a better future at this point. This is quickly becoming a therapy book for author to explain how she isn't the baddy and we should invest in her cause she knows what to do.
In her acknowledgements at the end she IDs her research assistant who, by name and pronouns, probably has less privilege than her - and then says that one day they'll be writing a book. Oh my friggin head. Why didn't you just support that person?
This book could have been amazing if she'd taken one of her non-white friends (or even better, not a friend in her rough privilege circle but somebody who genuinely could use the status boost) to write most of it and then she has a paragraph each chapter basically saying "boom yes".
Author legitimately has some great one liners.
But
She herself acknowledges at some point that she can't speak for those whose experiences she doesn't understand properly and yet there's this whole book that I'm reading. Speaking for others whose situation you don't understand isn't okay - adding your voice to say "I agree and this is the responsibility for white folks to take on in response to this call to action" would be something actually different in the field of these books and would have made the impact of this book relevant.
There's just so, so much talk about how she knows she's privileged - and absolutely no acknowledgement of what fixing the dis-privilege that others face (as a direct result of her actions sometimes) looks like.
She actually talks about how at one point when she was writing a statement about racism and whatnot she was called in by somebody to ask if it was going to be a generic "racism is out there and bad and scary" or if it would actually acknowledge the racism in the organization. She felt this was revolutionary knowledge, and... never applied it to herself or if she should write a book on what America needs?
She talks about how the care society needs is not just physical care, but a relationship, and then takes sole authorship on a book that she had a research assistant for.
"Hearing that rage and accepting it is not the same as taking action against the conditions that produce it. But it is a first and necessary step, one that all of us can take." (p 78)
Somebody who is in that first stage shouldn't be writing a book on how we can get to a better place.
Marginalized folks have been "heard" for centuries, we want action.
If you haven't actioned, please don't take up space from those who have. Action yourself before bragging about how great you are, please.
"We cannot avoid a reckoning. In the speech he gave in 1990 on "Personal Renewal," John Gardner told his audience: "The individual intent on self-renewal will have to deal with ghosts of the past - the memory of earlier failures, the remnants of childhood dramas and rebellions, accumulated grievances and resentments that have long outlived their cause."" (p 94)
Okay? So what does this look like? Notta. Also, why aren't you taking all the stories you just told me about how you've been told to lift others up more, and maybe lift somebody up?
Finally, in this summary of things that irked me, she talks about "Native Americans descended from thee tribes and nations that once inhabited the land where they sit". Yo, if we're still alive we're still our nation. After all this talk about BLM and whatnot, has she honestly put in 0 effort into understanding what the Indigenous peoples that reside on what-is-currently-called-America want? Who the Indigenous peoples are? Or are Indigenous peoples just a nice end point to nod to and then move on from. This gaff could be excusable if a) she wasn't CEO of a thinktank about how to make America better again and b) she wasn't writing a book on how to fix America. But she is.
I am going to leave off on a couple paragraphs that I do like, though I find mildly bitter/ironic from somebody who at this stage seems to only want to do work if it is to boost her own image:
"Grace at the national level is much more complex. I am not suggesting that people who have been on the receiving end of systemic racism and injustice for decades and centuries should simply extend grace to the perpetrators of that injustice, past and present. The nation needs what Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow", calls a "process of racial reckoning" in schools, neighborhoods, and communities across the land. That work - of educating ourselves, forging a common consciousness, and allying for change - falls on white people.
I am, however, advocating some patience with the learning process, learning that is an indispensable part of renewal. Those Americans who want to undertake this work, who have finally been shocked into awareness of the deeply unjust reality that so many of our fellow Americans live with daily, do not need or merit praise. We are bound to stumble, however, and to make mistakes in trying to have difficult conversations or to overcome blind spots. I hope that those whom we unwittingly offend can give us enough grace to allow us to continue the journey."
With the affluence that I think author has, she could do something like a) pay somebody to teach her, b) organizing groups where people practice not being giant jerk bags, c) have accountability meetings with fellow white ladies where they list off the things they're doing and people can say "should you really be doing that" d) etc.
She doesn't need to gaff to marginalized people and then whine in a book about how those people quietly went to their peers to complain about how somebody in power made fun of them and state that they should have just told her she was being a jerk. Yes, tell your boss who is saying horrible things to you that they're saying horrible things about your marginalization, that's safe.
It rings hollow to hear that she wants to do this work when she so clearly isn't. It also makes me doubt that she has any solutions that are viable that haven't come directly from somebody who isn't her.
November 17, 2021
I loved this book. It resonated with me deeply. Anne-Marie Slaughter of New America was real and raw about her personal renewal and renewal for the United States of America. She boldly spoke about the history of our country. She presented a bold vision for our country, integrating the past, with clear steps to get there. Powerful.
November 19, 2021
Highly narcissistic. You don't learn when you are the one doing all the talking. More introspection and evolution needed. The only reason why I didn't give it one star is because some facts are correct.
June 24, 2023
I have loved Anne-Marie Slaughter, so I was excited to read this. Especially at this point in my life. But, instead this book just felt all over the place, highlighting her privilege and not even really making any points?
Read
November 30, 2021DNF
April 27, 2025
Written in 2021, this book concludes with a soaring dream of American renewal in 2026, The United States Semiquincentennial. However, reading in 2025, the author's dream seems an ironic and moving eulogy for what's likely to have been lost rather than a celebration of progress.
But what makes this book such a compelling and relevant read today is that dreams are dashed. When that happens, what does one do? Anne-Marie Slaughter shows how renewal is a process and mindset one can apply to personal goals as well as business challenges, and even political change. She emphasizes, for example, how resilience and persistence are essential. There is also much good discussion about the art of listening.
Reading this beautifully written book was personally inspiring and gives me hope for the future.
But what makes this book such a compelling and relevant read today is that dreams are dashed. When that happens, what does one do? Anne-Marie Slaughter shows how renewal is a process and mindset one can apply to personal goals as well as business challenges, and even political change. She emphasizes, for example, how resilience and persistence are essential. There is also much good discussion about the art of listening.
Reading this beautifully written book was personally inspiring and gives me hope for the future.
January 15, 2026
Easily a solid 4 stars. This is an interesting, focused, and well-researched book, part memoir and part treatise. It is about potential ways that America can embrace pluralities of voice and thought to become better than the Founding Fathers envisioned and, despite past missteps that have hindered our ability to reach full potential for all, to move beyond for all citizens.
Dream big! Do the work. Highly recommended.
Dream big! Do the work. Highly recommended.
June 16, 2022
Too woke for me. Directed to an American audience with specific political and identity politics.
September 25, 2021
Deeply disappointing.I worshipped this writer 20 years ago with.Instead it tears us apart,and in very self-centred way. Sad. Please go back to THE issue of what will bind together a world in which supranationalism turned out to be the god that failed.
I worshipped this writer 20 years ago with her wonderful insights into future international relations.Instead it tears us apart,and in a very self-centred way. Sad.
I worshipped this writer 20 years ago with her wonderful insights into future international relations.Instead it tears us apart,and in a very self-centred way. Sad.
December 29, 2021
This book was fine, but The Chessboard and the Web was more interesting.
March 24, 2023
I mean, eh. There are some useful insights, but it does feel a little solipsistic and it's definitely nowhere near as fresh as The Chessboard and the Web.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews