A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910

Penguin Publishing every once in awhile starts a new series of history books; this new series focuses in on the United States, and even though they have just done a few books, it looks like they are angling at being a textbook for college courses. Though with this book I am not sure how that will go.

This really thick book examines the early and mid parts of American history and examines them through the larger overall context of world upheaval. Mr. Hahn, the author, labels this era as the era of the civil wars; though often in world history it is seen as a conservative reactionary time after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Another thing I disagree with is the time span of this book. It is overly broad. Ending it in 1910, and still calling it the age of the civil wars, pushes that era further forward by twenty to thirty years. The book would have been tighter and easier to follow if it ended in 1880 or even 1890 at the latest. Sadly, this book–from the writing to not being able to sustain its own weight–is a poor entry to early-American history.