A Nation Rising

"History in Davis's hands is loud, coarse, painful, funny, irreverent--and memorable."

-- San Francisco Chronicle Following on his New York Times bestsellers America's Hidden History and Don't Know Much About History, Ken Davis explores the next chapter in the country's hidden history: the gritty first half of the 19th century, among the most tumultuous in the nation's short life.

These are the stories often left out of the textbooks--the moments that truly defined a rising nation.

• Fort Mims Massacre: The bloody frontier battle that shocked the nation, sparked a brutal war against the Creek Nation, and launched the military career of Andrew Jackson.
• A Daring Slave Rebellion: The forgotten story of Madison Washington, an escaped slave who led a successful revolt aboard the brig Creole, seizing freedom for more than 100 people and creating an international crisis.
• The Second Seminole War: A decades-long guerilla war in the swamps of Florida where runaway slaves and Seminole warriors joined forces to fight the U.S. Army to a bloody stalemate.
• Anti-Immigrant Riots: The shocking sectarian violence of the Philadelphia 'Bible Riots, ' a forgotten chapter of American intolerance where Nativist mobs burned churches in the City of Brotherly Love.
• Manifest Destiny's Power Couple: The intertwined journey of explorer John C. Frémont and his brilliant wife Jessie Benton Frémont, whose ambition and adventures helped push America's borders to the Pacific.