A New York Times Notable Book of 2013

A Kirkus Best Book of 2013

A Bookpage Best Book of 2013

Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous chapters in America's past, when the country dreamed big, craved new lands and new freedom, and was bitterly divided over its great moral wrong: slavery.
 
With a canvas of extraordinary

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As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration--an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the President-Elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people. On the eve of his 52nd...

The history of the modern U.S. Capitol, the iconic seat of American government, is also the chronicle of America's most tumultuous years. An award-winning journalist has captured with impeccable detail the clash of personalities behind the building of the Capitol and its extraordinary design and engineering.

One of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century American history, Thaddeus Stevens is best remembered for his role as congressional leader of the radical Republicans and as a chief architect of Reconstruction. Long painted by historians as a vindictive "dictator of Congress," out to punish the South at the behest of big business and his own ego, Stevens receives a more balanced treatment in Hans L. Trefousse's biography, which portrays...

"A character-driven narrative history about the nineteenth-century radicals--from Fanny Wright and Henry David Thoreau to John Brown and William Lloyd Garrison--who demanded that the United States live up to its revolutionary ideals, and what their successes and failures can teach us today"--

"Now, perhaps, only those enmeshed in 19th-century American history know his name; but when John Hay died in 1905, he was one of the most famous men in the world. And one of the most highly regarded. Abraham Lincoln's private secretary during the Civil War, thereafter as a popular poet, novelist, newspaper editor, highly esteemed historian and biographer, diplomat, businessman, and secretary of state until his death, Hay enjoyed remarkable success...

"The author identifies John Wilkes Booth's primary motivation for killing Abraham Lincoln as a growing commitment to white supremacy as an ideology rather than as a political loyalty to the Confederacy. Through alternate chapters, the author shows how Lincoln's increasing acceptance of emancipation and racial equality exacerbated Booth's hatred for Lincoln"--

"Radical Sacrifice chronicles the life and military career of Union general Fitz John Porter, commander of the Army of the Potomac's Fifth Corps under George McClellan. A highly ranked graduate of the United States Military Academy, Porter rose steadily through the ranks during the Mexican-American War and subsequent military action in the West. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Porter became a favorite of McClellan, distinguishing himself in several...