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Holding Details

Barcode30053003291187
Home LocationParis-Bourbon
Call No320.5409 73 WOOD
Title Union : the struggle to forge the story of United States nationhood / Colin Woodard.
Author Woodard, Colin, 1968- author.
CollectionAdult 300-399
Reserve Item

Copies

StatusHome LocationBarcodeCall NoCreated OnIssue NameCirc Status
 Paris-Bourbon30053003291187320.5409 73 WOOD6/15/2020 Available

Catalog Details

Personal Name Woodard, Colin, 1968- author.
Title Statement Union : the struggle to forge the story of United States nationhood / Colin Woodard.
Production, Publication, Distribution, Manufacture, and Copyright Notice [New York] : Viking, 2020.
Physical Description xii, 417 pages ; 24 cm
Content Type text txt rdacontent
Media Type unmediated n rdamedia
Carrier Type volume rdacarrier
Bibliography, Etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 371-402) and index.
Summary, Etc. "The author of American Nations returns to the historical study of a fractured America by examining how a myth of national unity was created and fought over in the nineteenth century--a myth that continues to affect us today. Union tells the story of how the myth of our national origins, identity, and purpose was intentionally created in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A small group of individuals--historians, political leaders, and novelists--fashioned a history that attempted to erase the fundamental differences and profound tensions between the nation's regional cultures, the motive for the Confederacy's secession (protecting a slave system), and even the reasons that drove the colonies to secede from Britain. These men were creating the idea of an American nation instead of a union of disparate states, and a specific, ethnically defined "American people" instead of just a republican citizenry. Their 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 in the late nineteenth century, capturing the White House in the early twentieth century, and offering the first consensus, pan-regional vision of U.S. nationhood by the close of the first World War. This narrower, more exclusive vision of America would be overthrown in mid-century, but as early twenty-first-century Americans discovered, it was never fully vanquished. Woodard tells the story of the genesis and epic confrontations between these visions of our nation'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"-- Provided by publisher.
Subject Added Entry - Topical Term Nationalism United States History.
Subject Added Entry - Topical Term National characteristics, American History.
Subject Added Entry - Topical Term Regionalism United States History.
Subject Added Entry - Geographical Term United States Politics and government Philosophy.

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