In this beautifully written history of America’s formative period, an eminent historian upends the traditional story of a young nation marching to its continent-spanning destiny. The newly constituted United States actually emerged as an internally fragile union of states that clashed over a tenuous balance of regional power. European empires and the new republic of Mexico sought to contain that union by allying with Native peoples who defended their homelands. Bitter political divisions pitted those favouring strong government with elite rule against those, like Andrew Jackson, espousing a democratic populism for white men. With a flood of settlers pouring into the west, the United States invaded Canada, Florida, Texas and much of Mexico. It forcibly removed most of the Native peoples living east of the Mississippi. And after the Mexican war, with conquered territory reaching west to the Pacific, the sectional divisions over slavery produced a crisis.

"Stimulating… Many histories of this important interregnum period have been written, but none emphasizes the fragility of the American experiment as strongly as Taylor’s book does. American Republics succeeds admirably." -- David S. Reynolds - The New York Times Book Review
"[Alan Taylor’s] book is written in clear, readable prose designed for readers with little or no prior knowledge of the period, and the work has touches of wokeness, which helps to fit it nicely into this extraordinary moment in our history." -- Gordon S. Wood - The Wall Street Journal
"[A] masterful new volume..." -- M.J. Andersen - Boston Globe

Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, is the author of American Revolutions and American Republics, prior volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.