Waking Giant

<p><strong>A <em>New York Times </em>Notable Book</strong></p><p><strong>Far more than just a political story or for that matter a story of Andrew Jackson Reynolds's book shines a bright light on the cultural social intellectual and artistic currents buffeting the nation. . . . Reynolds is a thoughtful historian and <em>Waking Giant</em> is as engaging and insightful a narrative of this critical interregnum as any written in years.--<em>New York Times Book Review </em></strong></p><p><strong>A brilliant definitive history of America's vibrant and tumultuous rise during the Jacksonian era from the Bancroft Prize-winning author of <em>Walt Whitman's America</em></strong></p><p>America experienced unprecedented growth and turmoil in the years between 1815 and 1848. It was an age when Andrew Jackson redefined the presidency and James K. Polk expanded the nation's territory. Historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds captures the turbulence of a democracy caught in the throes of the controversy over slavery the rise of capitalism and the birth of urbanization. He brings to life the reformers abolitionists and temperance advocates who struggled to correct America's worst social ills and he reveals the shocking phenomena that marked the age: violent mobs P. T. Barnum's freaks all-seeing mesmerists polygamous prophets and rabble-rousing feminists. Meticulously researched and masterfully written <em>Waking Giant</em> is a brilliant chronicle of America's vibrant and tumultuous rise.</p>