American Republics

A Continental History of the United States 1783-1850

By: Alan Taylor

Narrated by: Graham Winton

Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

From a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, the powerful story of a fragile nation as it expands across a contested continent.

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.

©2021 Alan Taylor (P)2021 Recorded Books Inc.

Excellent overview of the years that formed our nation

This is an excellent overview of the years that formed our nation. It is, at times, painful to listen to the pain and carnage we inflicted to those consider lesser humans. This deep understanding of what we did as a nation should be required reading to all.

Depressing history...

This is a long, sad story of personal ambition and ruthless land grabs. We owe the Native Americans more than we can ever repay.

Good to learn

Lots of info that’s good to learn about what history was really like. Depressing to learn how people were treated!

A Portrait, not a political history

This book has a variable range of ratings. What I think is the cause is that this (as the title says), is a Continental history. Mr. Taylor has given us a portrait of America from revolution to the eve of the civil war. This is an important distinction as it reflects more about the humans living on the continent and less on the so called “philosophical debates” which was sophistry explaining our “peculiar” history. This is a corrective of how we truly acted and not how we wished it had been.
My quibble has to do with a bit of repetitiveness in some chapters that an editor should have caught. It was worth the time considering Taylor’s arguments and is recommended.

Eye-opening!

This is a period of American history with which I was unfamiliar so I chose to read this after seeing some positive reviews. It is an excellent, well-written, informative and eye-opening take on this critical period of American expansionism prior to the Civil War. Highly recommend this book…also excellent narration.

Superb

Alan Taylor is a national treasure. His work is deeply researched, extensively footnoted and exquisitely written.

What is true today was true yesterday

What a rich and diverse country we live in. Our seeds of diversity and divide are as old as our land.

Excellent and depressing history of the US

A wonderful and eyes-open portrayal of American history - the rot of the root of racism in the United States is starkly outlined. It gives me pause to realize that we owe our national borders and current political divide to a disgusting history of mob violence and slavery, so opposed to the ideal of democratic republicanism. May we outgrow this cancer in our Republic.

The Down Side of America's History

Interesting and concise historical remdering of a formative period in America's emergence as a nation. Unfornately unbalenced as it emphasizes the most negative interpretations and motivations that drove the political process in the United States from its infancy in 1783 to 1850 on the the brink of a cival war.

Essential Background for Understanding the Civil War

Relentless in its documentation of slavery and white supremacy, this is not a heroic tale of manifest destiny. We should all be ashamed, but the fault most likely lies in basic human nature. Highly recommended.