Summary
"In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian ... Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American history. Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbrea... Full description
- Part one: The idea (1492-1799). The nature of the past ; The rulers and the ruled ; Of wars and revolutions ; The constitution of a nation
- Part two: The people (1800-1865). A democracy of numbers ; The soul and the machine ; Of ships and shipwrecks ; The face of battle
- Part three: The state (1866-1945). Of citizens, persons, and people ; Efficiency and the masses ; A constitution of the air ; The brutality of modernity
- Part four: The machine (1946-2016). A world of knowledge ; Rights and wrongs ; Battle lines ; America, disrupted
- Epilogue: The question addressed.