Product Description

The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. In this Pulitzer prize-winning, critically acclaimed addition to the series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent. Howe's panoramic narrative portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America's economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs--advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans--were the true prophets of America's future. He reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women's rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe's story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.

Winner of the New-York Historical Society American History Book Prize

Finalist, 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14976 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 928 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In the latest installment in the Oxford History of the United States series, historian Howe, professor emeritus at Oxford University and UCLA (The Political Culture of the American Whigs), stylishly narrates a crucial period in U.S. history—a time of territorial growth, religious revival, booming industrialization, a recalibrating of American democracy and the rise of nationalist sentiment. Smaller but no less important stories run through the account: New York's gradual emancipation of slaves; the growth of higher education; the rise of the temperance movement (all classes, even ministers, imbibed heavily, Howe says). Howe also charts developments in literature, focusing not just on Thoreau and Poe but on such forgotten writers as William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina, who helped create the romantic image of the Old South, but whose proslavery views eventually brought his work into disrepute. Howe dodges some of the shibboleths of historical literature, for example, refusing to describe these decades as representing a market revolution because a market economy already existed in 18th-century America. Supported by engaging prose, Howe's achievement will surely be seen as one of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade. 30 photos, 6 maps. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Both academics and lay readers praised What Hath God Wrought, but they appreciated it for different reasons. It is certainly an exhaustively researched and well-written historical survey—exactly what a volume in the Oxford History Series ought to be. American historians admired its elegant synthesis but also understood that Howe is attempting to lead his readers and colleagues away from the strictly economic explanations that have often dominated writing on this period. Historian Jill Lepore, for example, thought that the change in perspective helps Howe subtly explain many aspects of the period, such as the women’s rights movement. Only historian Glenn C. Altschuler believed that Howe has some "axioms to grind" in his reworking of so-called Jacksonian Democracy. Howe’s approach also brings nonacademic readers back into the conversation, though at over 900 pages, the book is probably best suited for history buffs.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Review

"What Hath God Wrought is the dazzling culmination of the author's lifetime of distinguished scholarship.... The sustained quality of Howe's prose makes it even harder to put down a volume whose sheer weight makes it hard to pick up.... What Hath God Wrought lays powerful claim to being the best work ever written on this period of the American past."--Richard Carwardine, The Journal of Southern History
"Howe knows his era as well as any historian living, and he generously instructs his readers with detailed expertise and crisp generalizations."--John Lauritz Larson, The Journal of American History
"What Hath God Wrought is a feat worth applauding no matter what omissions will occur to every specialist in any facet of early national America."--Scott E. Casper, Reviews in American History
"Howe is a skillful storyteller who knows how to choose relevant anecdotes and revealing quotations. Both general readers and professional historians can benefit from the book. It can be read with pleasure from cover to cover."--Thomas Tandy Lewis, Magill's Literary Annual
"One of the best lessons offered by Howe's book comes in his refusal to view the period of 1815 to 1848 in anything other than its own terms. He never reduces the early part of the book to an analysis of how developments succeeded or failed the hopes of the 'founders.' Nor does he ever treat political and social developments as though they launched the United States on a high road to the Civil War.... Precisely because of this clear-eyed vision of the antebellum period, Civil War historians will want to take a fresh look back at howe's picture of the United States in a constant state of change."--Sarah J. Purcell, Civil War Book Review
"I like to have a heavy tome to calm me down at the end of the day. This is almost as big as a pathology book, but really well written."--Robin Cook
"A comprehensive, richly detailed, and elegantly written account of the republic between the War of 1812 and the American victory in Mexico a generation later...a masterpiece."--The Atlantic
"How's Pulitzer Prize-winning addition to the mulitvolume Oxford History of the United States is excellent in many ways, not least in the full attention it gives to the religious dynamics of American history in this period.... a very satisfying read."--The Christian Century
"Exemplary addition to the Oxford History of the United States... He is a genuine rarity...extraordinary."--Washington Post Book World
"One of the most outstanding syntheses of U.S. history published this decade."--Publishers Weekley starred review
"What Hath God Wrought is both a capacious narrative of a tumultuous era in American history and a heroic attempt at synthesizing a century and a half of historical writing about Jacksonian democracy, antebellum reform, and American expansion."--The New Yorker
"This extraordinary contribution to the Oxford History of the United States series is a great accomplishment by one of the United States' most distinguished historians.... It is, in short, everything a work of historical scholarship should be."--Foreign Affairs
"The book is a sweeping and monumental achievement that no student of American history should let go unread. Attentive to historiography yet writing accessible and engaging prose, Howe has produced the perfect introduction or reintroduction to an enormously important period in American national development."--American Heritage
"The best book on Jackson today."--Gordon Wood, Salt Lake Deseret Morning News
"What Daniel Walker Howe hath wrought is a wonderfully mind-opening interpretation of America on the cusp of modernity and might."--George F. Will, National Review Online
"Howe's book is the most comprehensive and persuasive modern account of America in what we might prefer hereafter to call the Age of Clay. It should be the standard work on the subject for many years to come."--American Nineteenth Century History

Customer Reviews

A fabulous and scholarly addition to the Oxford History of the United States
What Hath God Wrought, the latest entry into the marvelous series, The Oxford History of the United States, by Daniel Walker Howe, is another major score for readers and historians alike. It is well a thought out, broad in scope, interesting in concept and a very readable narrative of the United States from the end of the War of 1812 (1815) to the end of the Mexican American War (1848). Howe's subtitle, "The Transformation of America" is proven in an interdisciplinary way throughout its pages. Perhaps the editor, David M. Kennedy, puts it best, "Like Tocqueville's (Democracy in America), his deepest subject in not simply politics - though the pages that follow do full justice to the tumultuous and consequential politics of the era - but the entire array of economic, technological, social, cultural, and even psychological developments that were beginning to shape a distinctively American national identity. Howe brings to bear an impressive command of modern scholarship to explicate topics as varied as the Mexican War; the crafting of the Monroe Doctrine and the clash with Britain over the Oregon country; the emergence of the Whig, Free Soil, and Republican Parties; the Lone Star revolution in Texas and the gold rush in California; the sectional differentiation of the American economy; the accelerating pace of both mechanical and cultural innovations, not least as they affected the organization of the household and the lives of women; and the emergence of a characteristic American literature in the works of writers like Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, Margaret Fuller, Frederick Douglass, and Walt Whitman." Howe himself lives up to his words - "Along with the traditional subject matter of history - political, diplomatic, and military events - the story includes the social, economic, and cultural developments that have extensively concerned historians in recent years. This reflects my own conviction that both kinds of history are essential to a full understanding of the past." This is a fabulous historical narrative of a period in history that is generally, and wrongly, simply viewed through the "Jacksonian Democracy" lens. A fine read and clearly worthy of this terrific and scholarly series by the Oxford University Press.


On a somewhat different note, it appears as if readers are in for a treat over the next 12- 24 months with the "missing" volumes at least having manuscripts into David Kennedy (Freedom from Fear) and the series' new editor with the passing of C. Vann Woodward.

Volumes 1 and 2, covering the Colonial Period (1672-1763) have been assigned, in some order, yet to be made public (that I am aware of) to Fred Anderson (University of Colorado) and Andrew Cayton (Miami University of Ohio).

Volume 3 - The Glorious Cause 1763-89, Robert Middlekauf PUBLISHED
Volume 4 - The U.S. from 1789-1815, Gordon Wood (Brown University)
Volume 5- What Hath God Wrought 1815-48, Daniel Walker Howe (UCLA) PUBLISHED and reviewed above
Volume 6- Battle Cry of Freedom, 1848-65, James McPherson PUBLISHED
Volume 7- Leviathan: America Comes of Age, 1865-1900, H.W. Brands (Texas) - scratched from series but due out in October/November of this year (2007)
Volume 8- Reawakened Nation, 1896-1929, Bruce Schulman (Boston University)
Volume 9- Freedom from Fear, 1929-1945, David M. Kennedy PUBLISHED
Volume 10- Grand Expectations, 1945-74, James T. Patterson PUBLISHED
Volume 11- Restless Giant, 1974-2000, James T. Patterson PUBLISHED
Volume 12 - a volume on US Foreign Policy, not period specific, George C. Herring (University of Kentucky) due out 2008

A comprehensive overview of a dynamic young nation
The decades following the War of 1812 witnessed some of the most dramatic changes in our nation's history. In that time, the United States underwent political, economic, and social transformations that dramatically reshaped the country, taking it from its post-colonial emergence and setting it on the road towards its dynamic emergence in the world. Daniel Walker Howe's book is a narrative of these years and the changes that took place, as well as what those changes meant to the future of the country.

Though Howe examines nearly every aspect of the period, politics dominate his coverage, which is understandable given his background as a political historian. The figure of Andrew Jackson looms large in these pages, yet Howe rejects any characterization of the era as "Jacksonian", arguing that the phrase glosses over his controversial and divisive nature. This controversy is reflected well within his account, as Howe is highly critical of Jackson (something that is somewhat predictable from the start given that his book is dedicated to the memory of John Quincy Adams), asserting that the seventh president demonstrated an authoritarian bent throughout his career. His arguments on this, as with so many other parts of the books, are convincing, and supported by an impressive command of the scholarship on the period. Nor is the author shy on asserting his own viewpoint in these debates, arguing that a "communications revolution" was more demonstrable than the "market revolution" seen by Charles Sellers and others, that the emergence of the market economy was not the negative development Sellers made it out to be, and that Jackson's campaigns were hardly the democracy-expanding force asserted by historians such as Sean Wilentz. These historiographical assertions do not slow down his work, however; if anything, he could have engaged them a bit more within the text to explain why such interpretations are contestable.

This is a minor quibble with a major achievement. Broad in scope and encompassing an impressive amount of material, Howe provides a readable and perceptive survey of a dynamic young nation, one that experienced a breathtaking number of changes during these years. His book is among the best entries of the "Oxford History of the United States" series, and surely will be a standard text on the era for many decades to come.

Thorough & well written history of the period
As other reviewers have mentioned, the book is necessarily heavy on political history, though this book is not the tale of the rise and fall of political parties or politicians. Instead, Howe has chosen to evaluate American society largely through a political lens - in fact, he has chosen six major actors to play leading roles in his story: Andrew Jackson, J.Q. Adams, Henry Clay, James K. Polk, John Calhoun, & Daniel Webster.

Although he focuses largely on the achievements (or, in some cases the failures) of these men, he does not ignore society as a whole, nor does he ignore military endeavors, such as the Mexican War and the participants in that conflict.

All told, this is an excellent synthesis of the period. Professor Howe has demonstrated an extraordinary command of the secondary literature of the period, while incorporating many works of recent scholarship (especially the last 10 years). I was very impressed as I read the book with Howe's skillful weaving of a narrative loosely coupled by the theme of a communications revolution, which is much different than many other works pertaining to this period, which focus almost exclusively on the economic transformation that took place in this period.

I was equally impressed with Howe's command of the entire nation; unlike many books about this period, he did not sectionalize the book; by not focusing on just the Southern US, or just the Eastern seaboard, he allows the reader to understand the whole picture.

This is a worthy addition to any library of one who is intrigued by US History, even if that reader is not a 19th century specialist. I would even encourage professors to consider assigning this as a basic text (despite the fact that it is a rather lenghty tome at 860+ pages) for an upper level survey of Jacksonian America. It is a much appreciated addition to the Oxford History of the United States series.