Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood

The U.S. is an extremely fragile creation because it was formed as an ad hoc alliance of rival colonies, each with very different ethnographic, political, and religious characteristics. Woodard describes the 19th century effort to create and propagate a national narrative for the U.S. that could unite its disparate regional cultures, a battle that continues to rage today with existential stakes.