From a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, the powerful story of a precarious United States as it expands across a contested continent
In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, an eminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation marching to its continent-spanning destiny.
The newly constituted United States actually emerged as an internally fragile union of states that clashed over a tenuous balance of regional power. European empires and the new republic of Mexico sought to contain that union by allying with Native peoples who defended their homelands. Bitter political divisions pitted those favouring strong government with elite rule against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. With a flood of settlers pouring into the west, the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas and much of Mexico. It forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. And after the Mexican war, with conquered territory reaching west to the Pacific, the sectional divisions over slavery produced a crisis.
About the Author
Alan Taylor has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in History, most recently for The Internal Enemy, also a National Book Award finalist. He is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor of History at University of Virginia, and lives in Charlottesville.
Industry Reviews
"Stimulating… Many histories of this important interregnum period have been written, but none emphasizes the fragility of the American experiment as strongly as Taylor’s book does. American Republics succeeds admirably."
David S. Reynolds, The New York Times Book Review
"[Alan Taylor’s] book is written in clear, readable prose designed for readers with little or no prior knowledge of the period, and the work has touches of wokeness, which helps to fit it nicely into this extraordinary moment in our history."
Gordon S. Wood, The Wall Street Journal
"[A] masterful new volume..."
M.J. Andersen, Boston Globe
