What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848 Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001PI828I | Format: PDF
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848 Description
Pulitzer Prize, History, 2008
In this addition to the esteemed Oxford History of the United States series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era of revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated America's expansion and prompted the rise of mass political parties.
He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party but contends that John Quincy Adams and other advocates of public education, economic integration, and the rights of blacks, women, and Indians were the true prophets of America's future.
Howe's panoramic narrative - weaving together social, economic, and cultural history with political and military events - culminates in the controversial but brilliantly executed war against Mexico that gained California and Texas for America.
Please note: The individual volumes of the series have not been published in historical order. What Hath God Wrought is number V in The Oxford History of the United States.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 32 hours and 50 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: January 9, 2009
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001PI828I
What Hath God Wrought, the latest entry into the marvelous series, The Oxford History of the United States, by Daniel Walker Howe, is another major score for readers and historians alike. It is well a thought out, broad in scope, interesting in concept and a very readable narrative of the United States from the end of the War of 1812 (1815) to the end of the Mexican American War (1848). Howe's subtitle, "The Transformation of America" is proven in an interdisciplinary way throughout its pages. Perhaps the editor, David M. Kennedy, puts it best, "Like Tocqueville's (Democracy in America), his deepest subject in not simply politics - though the pages that follow do full justice to the tumultuous and consequential politics of the era - but the entire array of economic, technological, social, cultural, and even psychological developments that were beginning to shape a distinctively American national identity. Howe brings to bear an impressive command of modern scholarship to explicate topics as varied as the Mexican War; the crafting of the Monroe Doctrine and the clash with Britain over the Oregon country; the emergence of the Whig, Free Soil, and Republican Parties; the Lone Star revolution in Texas and the gold rush in California; the sectional differentiation of the American economy; the accelerating pace of both mechanical and cultural innovations, not least as they affected the organization of the household and the lives of women; and the emergence of a characteristic American literature in the works of writers like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman.
The decades following the War of 1812 witnessed some of the most dramatic developments in our nation's history. In that time, the United States underwent political, economic, and social transformations that profoundly reshaped the country, taking it from its post-colonial beginnings and setting it on the road towards its dynamic emergence in the world. Daniel Walker Howe's book is a narrative of these years and the changes that took place, as well as what those changes meant to the future of the country.
Though Howe examines nearly every aspect of the period, politics dominate his coverage, which is understandable given his background as a political historian. The figure of Andrew Jackson looms large in these pages, yet Howe rejects any characterization of the era as "Jacksonian", arguing that the phrase glosses over his controversial and divisive nature. This controversy is reflected well within his account, as Howe is highly critical of Jackson (something that is somewhat predictable from the start given that his book is dedicated to the memory of John Quincy Adams), asserting that the seventh president demonstrated an authoritarian bent throughout his career. His arguments on this, as with so many other parts of the books, are convincing, and supported by an impressive command of the scholarship on the period. Nor is the author shy on asserting his own viewpoint in these debates, arguing that a "communications revolution" was more demonstrable than the "market revolution" seen by Charles Sellers and others, that the emergence of the market economy was not the negative development Sellers made it out to be, and that Jackson's campaigns were hardly the democracy-expanding force asserted by historians such as Sean Wilentz.
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