A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

Written by Steven Hahn

Narrated by Barry Press

In this monumental story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize—winning historian Steven Hahn dismantles the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective that promises to be as enduring as it is controversial. It begins and ends in Mexico and, throughout, is internationalist in orientation. It challenges the political narrative of “sectionalism,” emphasizing the national footing of slavery and the struggle between the northeast and Mississippi Valley for continental supremacy. It places the Civil War in the context of many domestic rebellions against state authority, including those of Native Americans. It fully incorporates the trans-Mississippi west, suggesting the importance of the Pacific to the imperial vision of political leaders and of the west as a proving ground for later imperial projects overseas. It reconfigures the history of capitalism, insisting on the centrality of state formation and slave emancipation to its consolidation. It identifies a sweeping era of “reconstructions” in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that simultaneously laid the foundations for corporate liberalism and social democracy. 
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781681682631

Steven Hahn

Steve Hahn is associate professor of history at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews for A Nation Without Borders

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I guess this is supposed to be a retelling of US history with a lot more emphasis on relations with native tribes, other Europeans on the continent, and Mexico, to give it that transAtlantic flavor. I ended up thinking that this pudding had no theme, which in fairness may be the American story. I did get a good reminder that American politicians, particularly in the South, have a long history of suppressing votes; white male voter turnout in many Southern counties in the 19th century was 30% or so despite the supposed enfranchisement of white men, and that was no accident.