"...truly magnificent... a landmark of American historiography. It is elegantly written, imaginatively conceived, and the footnotes alone are worth reading as a guide to the past thirty years of scholarship on pre-Civil War US history... Sean Wilentz has injected new life into a familiar story." Adam I.P. Smith, The Times Literary Supplement "Written by one of America's leading historians of the early republic, it provides a rich, detailed and lengthy narrative of the pre-Civil War period." John E. Owens, The Times Higher Educational Supplement"