![]() ![]() Taylor’s history incorporates Canadian, Mexican, and Native American perspectives to recount the birth of the early Republic and the rise of American democracy. Taylor’s latest volume in his history of the United States (following 2001’s American Colonies and 2016’s American Revolutions) covers most of the same ground as these masterworks, but, unlike the others, he takes a continental approach that spans the surrounding regions. ![]() On offer besides American Republics are such acclaimed works as Charles Sellers’s provocative The Market Revolution (1991), Sean Wilentz’s Bancroft Prize–winning The Rise of American Democracy (2005), and Daniel Walker Howe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning What Hath God Wrought (2007). ![]() Surveys of the early Republic are plentiful, and so Taylor enters a crowded field. In his new book, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850, Alan Taylor studies the character of early American democracy, offering a frank look at its fierce prejudices and violent passions. Writing about his journey across the young United States, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that “in America I saw more than America I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions.” From Tocqueville onwards, Americans have struggled to tell the story of American democracy, its triumphs as well as its shortcomings. ![]()
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