Ecstatic Nation

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.