America, Empire of Liberty: A New History of the United States

by David Reynolds

Overview

"The best one-volume history of the United States ever written" (Joseph J. Ellis)

It was Thomas Jefferson who envisioned the United States as a great "empire of liberty." This paradoxical phrase may be the key to the American saga: How could the anti-empire of 1776 became the world's greatest superpower? And how did the country that offered unmatched liberty nevertheless found its prosperity on slavery and the dispossession of Native Americans?

In this new single-volume history spanning the entire course of US history—from 1776 through the election of Barack Obama—prize-winning historian David Reynolds explains how tensions between empire and liberty have often been resolved by faith—both the evangelical Protestantism that has energized American politics for centuries and the larger faith in American righteousness that has driven the country's expansion.

Written with verve and insight, Empire of Liberty brilliantly depicts America in all of its many contradictions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465020058
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	10/06/2009
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	592
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

David Reynolds is professor of international history at Christ's College, Cambridge. A regular visitor to the United States for forty years, he is the multiple prizewinning author of thirteen books ranging across the modern world, including In Command of History and, most recently, Island Stories. He lives in Cambridge, England.

Table of Contents

List of Maps ix

Introduction xi

Part I Liberty and Slavery

1 Natives and Europeans 3

2 Empire and Liberties 21

3 Independence and Republicanism 45

4 Liberty and Security 73

5 East and West 95

6 Slave or Free? 123

Part II Power and Progress

7 North and South 149

8 White and Black 177

9 Capital and Labor 197

10 Reform and Expansion 221

11 War and Peace 245

12 From Boom to Bomb 273

Part III Empire and Evil

13 Red or Dead? 307

14 Rights and Riots 335

15 The Impotence of Omnipotence 361

16 Detente and Discontent 389

17 Revolution and Democracy 417

18 Pride and Prejudice 441

19 Hope and Fear 469

Conclusion 513

Further Reading 525

Notes 539

Acknowledgments 599

Index 601

Editorial Reviews

In an animated overview up to the present time, Cambridge historian Reynolds (In Command of History) captures the sprawling chronicle of a nation forged from the fires of revolution, populated by immigrants and constantly evolving politically and culturally. Reynolds constructs his story around the “richly, sometimes fatally ambiguous” themes of empire, liberty and faith in the nation's development. The American colonists who overthrew an imperial government themselves created an empire based on manifest destiny and removal of Native Americans to reservations. As for liberty, Reynolds reminds us that it was built on the backs of black slaves, but white Americans were free from the intrusion of the federal government in their personal lives until the New Deal, which dramatically changed the nature of American liberty. The development of religious denominations in America contributed moral fervor to many progressive causes, such as temperance, and animated America in the cold war and George W. Bush's “war on terror.” Reynolds draws on letters and other documents from ordinary Americans to show the uneasy relationship among empire, liberty and faith. Most readers will find Reynolds's epic overview provocative and enjoyable. 3 maps. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

A concise and still-inclusive history of America-from Cahokia to the 2008 presidential election-by accomplished British historian Reynolds (International History/Cambridge Univ.; Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century, 2007, etc.). The author, an evident admirer of the cohesiveness of America's vast, multicultural experiment, shapes this teeming history around three themes: empire, liberty and faith. He uses empire not in terms of possessing an empire-in the sense of Old World imperialist powers Britain and France battling for supremacy while the United States prided itself from its founding as an "anti-empire"-but based on Thomas Jefferson's use of "empire of liberty," wherein the opening up of the American continent invited a free movement of peoples under a strong federal government. Jefferson's detailed "template" for Western acquisitions allowed territories to be gradually incorporated into the union, essentially creating an empire, but neutralized under the strictures of the Founding Fathers and protected by what became known as the Monroe Doctrine. The migration west invited economic opportunity, a melting pot of religious and cultural heritages and a "new style of mass politics" that tested the strength of the federal government, especially in terms of slave-holding versus free states. Reynolds looks at the enduring "redemptive impulse" of evangelical Protestantism throughout America's history, and how this crusader mentality infiltrated politics, for better (Martin Luther King Jr.'s mission) or worse (Reagan's "evil empire"). Within this complex history-"rarely simple, often messy, and sometimes appalling; yet also full of surprises, frequently epic, and onoccasion wonderfully uplifting"-the author inserts human-interest stories, diary entries and speech excerpts. Though the final portion of the narrative feels rushed, Reynolds does as fine, fair job of covering the civil-rights struggles of blacks, women and Native Americans. An evenhanded distillation of America's story from a singular outside observer.

Kirkus Reviews

"Let us not mince words...this is the best one-volume history of the United States ever written....[A] remarkable tour of the American past."—Joseph Ellis, The National Interest

"[T]he best single-volume account of the world's greatest society for many years. Even those of us who think we know America well are reminded anew what an awesome place it is."—Max Hastings, Sunday Times (London)

"An entertaining and fair-minded introduction to American history."—Economist

"Tracing the long dialectic between America's virtuous self-image and its sometimes rapacious actions is a mammoth task but one Reynolds carries off well."—Edward Luce, Financial Times

"An evenhanded distillation of America's story from a singular outside observer."—Kirkus

From the Publisher