Review by Booklist Review
Perhaps all nations begin as artificial constructions, created out of hopes and illusions rather than cultural realities. Some evolve and develop true national consciousness. Some are still struggling to define themselves witness many postcolonial states or even Belgium today. But North American nations? We like to think of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as distinct cultural and political entities, but Woodard asserts that these designations also ignore historical and cultural realities. Instead, Woodard identifies 11 distinct cultural regions and maintains that much of our current political turmoil reflects these divisions. Among the competing nations Woodard includes are Yankeedom, a product of Puritanism and a belief in government activism; Tidewater, a southern, inherently conservative region with a ruling class descended from English gentry; and the Deep South, tied intimately to the aristocratic sugar lords of the West Indies. This is an interesting but far-from-convincing analysis of our past and current squabbles.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Historian and journalist Woodward's new take on American history identifies the original cultural settlements that became the United States, and proceeds with the thesis that these regional and cultural divisions are responsible for clashes stretching back to Revolutionary times. The 11 nations don't follow state or even country territory lines, but rather the paths taken by the earliest settlers of these areas; while later immigrants added to the mix, they didn't change the fundamental culture. Woodward (The Republic of Pirates) uses this hypothesis to explain the Civil War, regional differences in education philosophies and voting patterns, even the disparate mentalities of northern and southern Californians. Concern for the future closes the book, citing "classic symptoms of an empire in decline": U.S. economic difficulties, "extreme political dysfunction," a politically divided population, and ongoing wars. Despite that pessimistic note, the book's compelling explanations and apt descriptions will fascinate anyone with an interest in politics, regional culture, or history. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Journalist Woodard (The Republic of Pirates) takes a fresh approach to North America by reviewing the history and ethnography of its various regions. He includes Mexico and Canada in his study but focuses mainly on the United States. He splits the continent into Left Coast, Far West, El Norte, Greater Appalachia, Midlands, Deep South, Tidewater, New Netherland, Yankeedom, and New France, with the four most powerful northern "nations" forming a Northern Alliance and the four most powerful southern ones a Dixie Bloc. The cultural and political clashes between these two "superpowers," he convincingly argues, has shaped American history, with the other three "nations" serving as swing regions tipping the scale on issues ranging from slavery to foreign policy. The regional histories predictably focus on colonization, the American Revolution, western migration, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, but the surprisingly thorough and wide-ranging story brings readers through the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, offering an up-to-date study as viewed through this distinct ethnographic lens. VERDICT The argument that there is not one American identity but many is not new, but Woodard makes a worthwhile contribution by offering an accessible, well-researched analysis with appeal to both casual and scholarly readers.-Douglas King, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Forget about the United States and Canada. The true nations of North America, writes historian and Christian Science Monitor foreign correspondent Woodard (The Republic of Pirates, 2007, etc.), have little to do with those artificialities.Borrowing fruitful notions from Joel Garreau'sNine Nations of North America(1981) and David Hackett Fischer'sAlbion's Seed: Four British Folkways in North America(1989), Woodard traces the differences in America's regions to cultural, ethnic, religious and political differences among various strains of settlers, many of them long in play back in the British Isles. What he calls The Midlands, for instance, extends from the central Atlantic Seaboard deep into the Great Plains, encircling "Yankeedom" by taking in the southern tier of east-central Canada. These regions are the historical purview of, respectively, the Quakers of the English Midlands and the Puritans of England's eastern coast, with their distinct views of human nature and how government had to be organized to respond to it. Some of his "eleven stateless nations of North America" descend from these two regions, representing the old divide between moderate conservatism, with its "middle-class ethos and considerable respect for intellectual achievement," and moderate liberalism, with its view that "society should be organized to benefit ordinary people." Other regions, though, are the product of an English elite that mistrusted any government that presumed to tell them what to do, even though they descended from feudalism. Behold, then, the South, both the aristocratic piedmont of Virginia and North Carolina and the hardscrabble, God-haunted, fearful Deep South. The author connects these regional differences to deep divisions in American life, noting that the old struggle between those moderate forces has been supplanted by the rise of that Deep South, perfected in the 2000 election, when it "established simultaneous control over the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives for the first time in forty-six years."Woodard offers a fascinating way to parse American (writ large) politics and history in this excellent book.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
