• A wildly optimistic book, this study looks forward to the ability of ordinary people to solve the political, social, sexual, and environmental problems that seem to threaten human life as we know it.
• A subtheme of this book is the regulation, control, and replenishment of water and the ways democratic thinkers and organizers have tried for a millennium to distribute resources in more egalitarian ways.
• By recording the struggles of men and women of all races and ethnicities to survive and triumph in forming creative and fulfilling lives, this book has held governments and social movements to a high standard and considered how ideas and criticism could reduce relations between so-called rulers and the ruled to levels of conversation about how to solve the world's problems and equitably distribute the world's resources.
• Placing its hopes in the way ordinary people have organized and can potentially organize life to promote the common good, this book regards politics and government as a creative enterprise capable of eliciting untold benefits for everyone on earth to enjoy.

    
In our time, the term "democracy" is frequently evoked to express aspirations for peace and social change or particular governmental systems that claim to benefit more than a select minority of the population. In this book, Temma Kaplan examines attempts from ancient Mesopotamia to the early twenty first century to create democratic governments that allow people to secure food, shelter, land, water, and peace for their mutual benefit.
   
Since early times, proponents of direct or participatory democracy have come into conflict with the leaders of representative institutions that claim singular power over democracy. Patriots of one form or another have tried to reclaim the initiative to determine what democracy should mean and who should manage it. Frequently, people in small communities, trade unions, or repressed racial, religious, and political groups have marched forward using the language of democracy to carve a space for themselves and their ideas at the center of political life. Sometimes they have reinterpreted the old laws, and sometimes they have formulated new laws and institutions in order to gain greater opportunities to debate the major issues of their time. 
   
This book examines the development of the democratic ideal from ancient Rome to the Cortes in Spain, the philosophies of Guru Nanak and the Castilian patriot Juan de Padilla, and such inspirational personalities as the Polish trade unionist Anna Walentnyowicz and Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi. Though few democracies have sustained themselves for significant lengths of time, their emergence nearly everywhere on earth over thousands of years indicates their resilience despite the fragility of the democratic ideal.