Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877

A New York Times Notable Book - A Kirkus Best Book of the Year - A Bookpage Best Book the Year

"A splendid new history of the Civil War period. . . . Wineapple brings alive the vibrant, imperfect people behind the issues. . . . A masterly, deeply moving record of a crucial period in American history." --David S. Reynolds, New York Times Book Review

Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation by award-winning historian and literary critic Brenda Wineapple, 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 characters, such as P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, and L. C. Q. Lamar, Ecstatic Nation brilliantly balances cultural and political history: It's a riveting account of the sectional conflict that preceded the Civil War, and astutely chronicles the complex aftermath of that war and Reconstruction, including the promise that women would share in a new definition of American citizenship. It takes us from photographic surveys of the Sierra Nevadas to the discovery of gold in the South Dakota hills, and it signals the painful, thrilling birth of modern America.

Ecstatic Nation is an epic and spellbinding tale of America--its glory and greed, its aspirations and humiliations--during an exhilarating and momentous period.

Author: Brenda Wineapple
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 08/05/2014
Pages: 736
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780061234583

Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 08/24/2014 pg. 32

About the Author
Wineapple, Brenda: -

Brenda Wineapple is the prizewinning author of several books, including White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in New York City.