WHAT IS citizenship?

Is it just something that gives you a passport? Voting every now and then? Bragging rights during the Olympics?

Or is something bigger? Something basic to the way we all should live together?

Citizenship does grants us rights and privileges: voting in elections, living and working in a country, and enjoying legal protections. But there’s more to it: citizenship asks us to meet responsibilities. too. It isn’t just about enjoying the privileges. It’s also about our duty to improve our community, our nation, and the world.

It’s easy to avoid doing this. In the United States, the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right. But is it a solitary pursuit? Should it be? Don’t our actions, or our inaction, affect others?

This book asks questions—and, we hope, answers them—about what it means to be a citizen in the broadest sense of the word. More than just legalities. More than just rights. And certainly more than just politics.

To think about what citizenship means is to wrestle with whether or not we have—and even with whether we should—have shared values, communal duties, and mutual aspirations.

This is a book for those who want to better understand the role they play—or could play—in society. Who want to learn how to contribute to their communities and to the world.

It’s about what we owe.