A New York Times Notable Book of 2013
A Kirkus Best Book of 2013
A Bookpage Best Book of 2013
Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation 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 it 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.
An epic tale by award-winning author Brenda Wineapple, Ecstatic Nation
lyrically and with true originality captures the optimism, the failures,
and the tragic exuberance of a renewed Republic.