Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake) | 973.5 HOW | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | 973.5 HOW | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 973.5 HOW | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryThe Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes two Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in What Hath God Wrought, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent. Howe's panoramic narrative portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America's economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs--advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans--were the true prophets of America's future. He reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women's rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe's story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States. By 1848 America had been transformed. What Hath God Wrought provides a monumental narrative of this formative period in United States history.
Author Notes
Daniel Walker Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus, Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Political Culture of the American Whigs and Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln. He lives in Los Angeles.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA (The Political Culture of the American Whigs), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. history-a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York's gradual emancipation of slaves; the growth of higher education; the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who "helped create the romantic image of the Old South," but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a "market revolution" because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Supported by engaging prose, Howe's achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade. 30 photos, 6 maps. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice Review
This masterful and sweeping synthesis of the early republic sets the standard for treatments of this period. Howe (emer., UCLA) argues that the twin revolutions of technology and communication were the fundamental elements shaping historical developments in this era, but he pays careful attention to the many facets of the period's history, including politics, economics, and the socio-cultural changes that so profoundly altered US society. The book's strengths are numerous, but Howe's signal contribution is to call into serious question the common characterization of Jacksonian democracy as a genuinely egalitarian impulse that greatly extended the scope of individual liberty during these years. Howe argues that this movement possessed a strong racial characteristic that wrote many groups out of the US polity as it expanded opportunities for white males. "The consequences of white male democracy, rather than its achievement, shaped the political life of this period." This much-needed corrective to the excessive lionization of the era's purported democratic character is vast in scope, yet eminently readable. Howe makes an admirable contribution to the historiography of the early republic even as he synthesizes much of that literature. Scholars, students, and general audiences with an interest in this crucial period will find this book a rewarding read. Summing Up: Essential. All collections. K. M. Gannon Grand View College
Library Journal Review
This authoritative addition to Oxford's "History of the United States" series is a product of synthesis and astute analysis. Intellectual and cultural historian Howe (Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln) touches upon the rapidly expanding nation's economy, foreign relations, and social structures, taking into account race, gender, and ethnicity, and bringing special insights to his discussion of religious revivals and the evolution of moral consciousness, reform movements, and political institutions. The evocative title, which was the first message carried by Morse's telegraph, refers to the changes wrought by religious sensibilities as well as those wrought by technological breakthroughs. Howe boldly emphasizes the "communications revolution" rather than the "market revolution" of the early 19th century, asserting that the latter largely happened among 18th-century commercial farmers. On the other hand, he does not emphasize a "Jacksonian America." Andrew Jackson, he asserts, was not as uniformly democratic or influential as his supporters maintain. A worthy addition to public and academic institutions; beginning scholars will appreciate the maps and the extensive bibliographic essay, fleshed out by the journal citations in the footnotes. Highly recommended.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Maps | p. xi |
| Editor's Introduction | p. xiii |
| Abbreviations Used in Citations | p. xvii |
| Introduction | p. 1 |
| Prologue: The Defeat of the Past | p. 8 |
| 1 The Continental Setting | p. 19 |
| 2 From the Jaws of Defeat | p. 63 |
| 3 An Era of Good and Bad Feelings | p. 91 |
| 4 The World That Cotton Made | p. 125 |
| 5 Awakenings of Religion | p. 164 |
| 6 Overthrowing the Tyranny of Distance | p. 203 |
| 7 The Improvers | p. 243 |
| 8 Pursuing the Millennium | p. 285 |
| 9 Andrew Jackson and His Age | p. 328 |
| 10 Battles over Sovereignty | p. 367 |
| 11 Jacksonian Democracy and the Rule of Law | p. 411 |
| 12 Reason and Revelation | p. 446 |
| 13 Jackson's Third Term | p. 483 |
| 14 The New Economy | p. 525 |
| 15 The Whigs and Their Age | p. 570 |
| 16 American Renaissance | p. 613 |
| 17 Texas, Tyler, and the Telegraph | p. 658 |
| 18 Westward the Star of Empire | p. 701 |
| 19 The War Against Mexico | p. 744 |
| 20 The Revolutions of 1848 | p. 792 |
| Finale: A Vision of the Future | p. 837 |
| Bibliographical Essay | p. 856 |
| Index | p. 879 |
