American Republics: A Continental History of the United States 1783-1850
Written by Alan Taylor
Narrated by Graham Winton
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, a preeminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation confidently marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as a fragile, internally divided union of states contending still with European empires and other independent republics on the North American continent. Native peoples sought to defend their homelands from the flood of American settlers through strategic alliances with the other continental powers. The system of American slavery grew increasingly powerful and expansive, its vigorous internal trade in Black Americans separating parents and children, husbands and wives. Bitter party divisions pitted elites favoring strong government against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. Violence was both routine and organized: the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas, and much of Mexico, and forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. At the end of the period the United States, its conquered territory reaching the Pacific, remained internally divided, with sectional animosities over slavery growing more intense.
Taylor’s elegant history of this tumultuous period offers indelible miniatures of key characters from Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Margaret Fuller. It captures the high-stakes political drama as Jackson and Adams, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster contend over slavery, the economy, Indian removal, and national expansion. A ground-level account of American industrialization conveys the everyday lives of factory workers and immigrant families. And the immersive narrative puts us on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Mexico City, Quebec, and the Cherokee capital, New Echota.
Absorbing and chilling, American Republics illuminates the continuities between our own social and political divisions and the events of this formative period.
Alan Taylor
Alan Taylor has been a journalist for over 30 years. He was deputy editor and managing editor of The Scotsman, and for 15 years was Writer-at-Large for the Sunday Herald. He has contributed to numerous publications, including The Times Literary Supplement, TheNew Yorker and The Melbourne Age and was co-founder and editor of The Scottish Review of Books. He was editor of the centenary editions of the collected novels of Muriel Spark and has edited several acclaimed anthologies, including The Assassin’s Cloak (2000). He also wrote the bestselling Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark (2017). He also edited Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries (2022).
More audiobooks from Alan Taylor
American Colonies: The Settling of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thomas Jefferson's Education Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to American Republics
Related audiobooks
Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The American Revolution: A History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Know Nothing Party: The History and Legacy of America’s Most Notorious Nativist Political Party Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Washington: The Making of the American Capital Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Before Independence: 1775-1776 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lexington and Concord: The Battle Heard Round the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Jay: Founding Father Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
United States History For You
Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Land of Delusion: Out on the edge with the crackpots and conspiracy-mongers remaking our shared reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Charlie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: 2nd Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lafayette in the Somewhat United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Adams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untold History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letter from Birmingham Jail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wright Brothers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for American Republics
18 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5An excellent history of period from the revolution to the Civil War. It takes a modern approach to historical method, asks hard questions about earlier histories, and tells stories about the people who lived in those times.