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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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UNION
The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood
A timely examination of the myth of national unity in the fractured United States, and a thoughtful history of how the country came to be so divided.
UNION stands apart from other books about the divided United States for it is first and foremost a history, beginning with American Independence and chronicling how the myth of national unity was created -- reaching back to its beginnings to trace how this country got to where it is today.
Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its many different regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood. It tells the dramatic tale of how the story of the US's national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created and fought over in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On one hand, a small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned and promoted a history that attempted to transcend and erase the fundamental differences and profound tensions between the nation's regional cultures. They believed that America had a God-given mission to lead humanity toward freedom, equality, and self-government and was held together by fealty to these ideals.
This emerging nationalist story was immediately and powerfully contested by another set of intellectuals and firebrands who argued that the United States was instead an ethno-state, the homeland of the allegedly superior "Anglo-Saxon" race, upon whom Divine and Darwinian favor shined. Their vision helped create a new federation -- the Confederacy -- prompting the bloody Civil War. While defeated on the battlefield, their vision later managed to win the war of ideas, capturing the White House in the early twentieth century, and achieving the first consensus, pan-regional vision of US nationhood in the years before the outbreak of the first World War. This narrower, more exclusive vision of America would be overthrown in mid-century, but it was never fully vanquished.
Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of the US's path and purpose through the lives of the key figures who created them, a cast of characters whose personal quirks and virtues, gifts and demons shaped the destiny of millions.
Union tells the story of the struggle to create a national myth for the United States, one that could hold its many different regional cultures together and forge an American nationhood. It tells the dramatic tale of how the story of the US's national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created and fought over in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On one hand, a small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned and promoted a history that attempted to transcend and erase the fundamental differences and profound tensions between the nation's regional cultures. They believed that America had a God-given mission to lead humanity toward freedom, equality, and self-government and was held together by fealty to these ideals.
This emerging nationalist story was immediately and powerfully contested by another set of intellectuals and firebrands who argued that the United States was instead an ethno-state, the homeland of the allegedly superior "Anglo-Saxon" race, upon whom Divine and Darwinian favor shined. Their vision helped create a new federation -- the Confederacy -- prompting the bloody Civil War. While defeated on the battlefield, their vision later managed to win the war of ideas, capturing the White House in the early twentieth century, and achieving the first consensus, pan-regional vision of US nationhood in the years before the outbreak of the first World War. This narrower, more exclusive vision of America would be overthrown in mid-century, but it was never fully vanquished.
Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of the US's path and purpose through the lives of the key figures who created them, a cast of characters whose personal quirks and virtues, gifts and demons shaped the destiny of millions.
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Book
Published 2020-06-16 by Viking |