What if we reclaimed “welfare” as well-being—and treated it as the infrastructure of democracy? In American Welfare: Reclaiming the Dream for All of U.S., Tracy Evans explores how cultural narratives about poverty and deservingness shaped America’s public systems—and how redesigning those systems with fairness, belonging, and trust at the center can strengthen democracy itself. Drawing on history, social science, and decades of leadership in human services, Evans offers a hopeful, forward-looking vision: the measure of our democracy is how well our people fare—and we can build it to serve all of us.