Winner of the 2022 New-York Historical Society Book Prize in American History A Washington Post and BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 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.

Winner of the James H. Broussard First Book Prize PROSE Award in U.S. History (Honorable Mention) A major new interpretation recasts U.S. history between revolution and civil war, exposing a dramatic reversal in sympathy toward Latin American revolutions. In the early nineteenth century, the United States turned its idealistic gaze southward, imagining a legacy of revolution and republicanism it hoped would dominate the American hemisphere. From pulsing port cities to Midwestern farms and southern plantations, an adolescent nation hailed Latin America’s independence movements as glorious tropical reprises of 1776. Even as Latin Americans were gradually ending slavery, U.S. observers remained energized by the belief that their founding ideals were triumphing over European tyranny among their “sister republics.” But as slavery became a violently divisive issue at home, goodwill toward antislavery revolutionaries waned. By the nation’s fiftieth anniversary, republican efforts abroad had become a scaffold upon which many in the United States erected an ideology of white U.S. exceptionalism that would haunt the geopolitical landscape for generations. Marshaling groundbreaking research in four languages, Caitlin Fitz defines this hugely significant, previously unacknowledged turning point in U.S. history.

“Audacious . . . offers a fierce critique of democracy’s most dangerous adversary: the abuse of democratic power by democratically elected chief executives.” (Benjamin R. Barber, New York Times bestselling author of Jihad vs. McWorld ) Bruce Ackerman shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another?from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century?and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward. “The questions [Ackerman] raises regarding the threat of the American Executive to the republic are daunting. This fascinating book does an admirable job of laying them out.” —The Rumpus “Ackerman worries that the office of the presidency will continue to grow in political influence in the coming years, opening possibilities for abuse of power if not outright despotism.” —Boston Globe “A serious attention-getter.” —Joyce Appleby, author of The Relentless Revolution “Those who care about the future of our nation should pay careful heed to Ackerman’s warning, as well as to his prescriptions for avoiding a constitutional disaster.” —Geoffrey R. Stone, author of Perilous Times

One of the finest historians of her generation, Jan Ellen Lewis (1949-2018) transformed our understanding of the early U.S. Republic. Her groundbreaking essays defined the emerging fields of gender and emotions history and reframed traditional understandings of the founding fathers and the U.S. Constitution. As significant as her work was within each of these subfields, her most remarkable insights came from the connections she drew among them. Gender and race, slavery and freedom, feelings and politics ran together in the hearts, minds, and lives of the men and women she studied. Lewis's brilliant research revealed these long-buried connections and illuminated their importance for America's past and present. Family, Slavery, and Love in the Early American Republic collects thirteen of Lewis's most important essays. Distinguished scholars shed light on the historical and historiographical contexts in which Lewis and her peers researched, wrote, and argued. But the real star of this volume is Lewis herself: confident, unconventional, erudite, and deeply imaginative.

William Cooper and James Fenimore Cooper, a father and son who embodied the contradictions that divided America in the early years of the Republic, are brought to life in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. William Cooper rose from humble origins to become a wealthy land speculator and U.S. congressman in what had until lately been the wilderness of upstate New York, but his high-handed style of governing resulted in his fall from power and political disgrace. His son James Fenimore Cooper became one of this country’s first popular novelists with a book, The Pioneers, that tried to come to terms with his father’s failure and imaginatively reclaim the estate he had lost. In William Cooper’s Town, Alan Taylor dramatizes the class between gentility and democracy that was one of the principal consequences of the American Revolution, a struggle that was waged both at the polls and on the pages of our national literature. Taylor shows how Americans resolved their revolution through the creation of new social reforms and new stories that evolved with the expansion of our frontier.

A number of curious communities sprang up across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: simulated cities, states, and nations in which children played the roles of legislators, police officers, bankers, journalists, shopkeepers, and other adults. They performed real work—passing laws, growing food, and constructing buildings, among other tasks—inside virtual worlds. In this book, Jennifer Light examines the phenomena of “junior republics” and argues that they marked the transition to a new kind of “sheltered” childhood for American youth. Banished from the labor force and public life, children inhabited worlds that mirrored the one they had left. Light describes the invention of junior republics as independent institutions and how they were later established at schools, on playgrounds, in housing projects, and on city streets, as public officials discovered children's role playing helped their bottom line. The junior republic movement aligned with cutting-edge developmental psychology and educational philosophy, and complemented the era's fascination with models and miniatures, shaping educational and recreational programs across the nation. Light's account of how earlier generations distinguished "real life" from role playing reveals a hidden history of child labor in America and offers insights into the deep roots of such contemporary concepts as gamification, play labor, and virtuality.

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.--New York Times Book Review "During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.--William and Mary Quarterly "[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the Revolutionary generation.--New England Quarterly "This is an admirable, thoughtful, and penetrating study of one of the most important chapters in American history.--Wesley Frank Craven