A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism Audiobook

Quotes

• A Sovereign People is right that Americans--against the odds--forged a strong and lasting nationalism in the 1790s."--Wall Street Journal

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• In this distinctive new interpretation of the events of the 1790s, Berkin...portrays the decade not as the era that inaugurated American party politics but as the seedtime of American nationalism.... [An] enjoyable and lively survey." --Publishers Weekly "[An] insightful political history... Berkin makes a reasonable case that the Founders' resolve left the U.S. a viable nation." --Kirkus Reviews

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• In A Sovereign People, Carol Berkin has given us a powerful story about the birth of America-but one that most of us missed in school. After the Declaration and the Revolutionary War and the Constitutional Convention, what then? As Washington says to Hamilton in Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical, 'Winning was easy, young man. Governing's harder.' Just how much harder comes through in Berkin's compelling narrative, as she shows how the newborn republic survived a series of potentially fatal crises in the 1790s and toughened into a viable nation.

  — --James Basker, President, Gilder Lehrman Institute of America

• Carol Berkin's masterful new book guides readers through the turbulent first decade of government under the Constitution. The decisions of the nation's first congresses and presidential administrations ensured the nation's survival and set precedents for our enduring national values. As we confront the challenges facing America in the 21st century, there is much we can learn from the crises of government legitimacy and sovereignty faced by the nation in the 1790s.

  — --Julie Silverbrook, Executive Director, The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource)

• In a volume certain to provoke debate, Carol Berkin finishes the story begun in A Brilliant Solution, her masterful account of the forging of the Constitution. The new system of government, Berkin persuasively argues, was promptly tested by four crises. With meticulous research and vivid prose, Berkin deftly shows how the Federalist leadership not only weathered these emergencies but molded the fragile republic into a stable nation. A major book by a major historian.

  — --Douglas R. Egerton, author of Thunder At the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America

• No one tells the American story better than Carol Berkin, who has written captivating narratives about the colonial era, the Revolution, and the Constitution. Her compelling new book reveals that by 1800, the sovereign American people had emerged with the Constitution as their true foundation, although they would debate its meaning for centuries to come.

  — --Linda R. Monk, Author of The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to the Constitution