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The Shortest History of the United States of America
About this book
From revolution to civil rights, Hollywood and the Gilded Age
The extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes
When Britain's thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united.
In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out throughits history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.
This is a story full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.
'These were indeed strange times. Yet the forces at work in them were not new. Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.—Don Watson, The Shortest History of the United States of America
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Also in this series
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- Beginnings
- A Holy Commonwealth
- War and Consolidation
- Manifest Destiny
- A Great Awakening and Civil War
- Reconstruction and Gilded Age
- Progressives
- Depression and After
- War
- Post-War USA
- New Frontier and Great Society
- Dark Night, New Morning
- America Unbound
- The Unravelling
- Acknowledgements
- List of Images
- Index
- About the Author
- Back Cover