Sep 132011
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
An endlessly fascinating look at American regionalism and the eleven “nations” that continue to shape North America
According to award-winning journalist and historian Colin Woodard, North America is made up of eleven distinct nations, each with its own unique historical roots. In American Nations he takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped o
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A Remarkable Book,
This is a remarkable book, synthesizing many earlier efforts to explain the distinct differences among different regions of the US – and Canada and part of Mexico too.
Some reviewers have stated that there is not much new here compared to Joel Garreau’s 1980s book postulating 9 nations. I disagree – to me the historical thread tracing the origins of these differences are what makes it so compelling. Woodward’s romp through that history is worth the price of the book. And there are startlingly different accounts of many of the historical events that are not covered in high school text books, that’s for sure.
As a Canadian, it is interesting to see a treatment of history that, for Canadians, does not stop at the US border; and for Americans, does not stop a the Canadian (or Mexican) border.
I do agree with reviewers that Woodward’s comments at the end of the book add too much personal opinion that diminishes the historical objectivity he shows elsewhere.
In summary, this is a compelling explanation of the enormous regional differences that make up the cultural and political landscape of America – and explains a lot about those same differences in Canada too. I strongly recommend this book to both those interested in North American History and those interested in its cultural and political trends.
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|Amazing context for contemporary America,
You think the great fissures in American society are something new? Hardly. Far from being “one nation indivisible,” America, from the very start, has been a collection of fragments, always at tension, and only rarely cohesive. In this comprehensive, compelling, and cogent work, Colin Woodard explains the origins of what divides us. Highly recommended for anyone interested in American history, sociology, politics – really, if you’ve the slightest interest in how we got to where we are today, read this book.
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|unfied field theory of American history,
If you like your history big, all-encompassing, different, quirky, and bound to make you think, you’ll love this one.
It’s basically a follow-up to David Hackett Fisher’s Albion’s Seed. That book, which came out in 1989, posited 4 basic cultures that settled the US, and which continued to have a huge influence up to this day.
To those cultures (Puritan New England, Quaker Pennsylvania, Cavalier Tidewater, and Scots-Irish Appalachia), Woodard has added a few more (New Netherlands and the Deep South, for example), and extended coverage of them up to the current day. He does an excellent job showing how different the nations were at the time of the Revolution, and why uniting the country was as difficult as it was. He also shows how the different cultures extended across the landscape (for example, a Yankee influence in the Western Reserve of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as well as a similar influence on the “Left Coast”). He does a good job showing how immigration fits in as well (basically, the original cultures were so strong that immigrants went where they fit in). Finally, he shows how the current impasse between red and blue states can all be tied back to a basic cultural division between Yankeedom and the Deep South. It really does help explain “what’s the matter with Kansas?”
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