Table of Contents
Preface vii
1 Original Sin - American Slavery, American Freedom 1
2 Roots in Religious Zealotry 7
3 Whose Empire? 15
4 Patriots or Insurgents? 24
5 Independence and Civil War (Part One) 38
6 Whose Revolution? (Part Two) 48
7 Flowering or Excess of Democracy 60
8 Counter-Revolution of 1787? - New Constitution, New Nation 76
9 George Washington's Turbulent Administration 95
10 Liberty Versus Order 109
11 The Jeffersonian Enigma 120
12 The Forgotten and Peculiar War of 1812 130
13 Birth of an Era of Revolutions 143
14 Andrew Jackson's White Male World and the Start of Modern Politics 152
15 The Fraudulent Mexican-American War 172
16 A Broken Union 188
17 The Second American Civil War - The Slow, Perilous Shift to Emancipation 204
18 Reconstruction, a Failed Experiment? 217
19 Lies We Tell Ourselves About the Old West 233
20 Wealth and Squalor in the Progressive Era 254
21 The Tragic Dawn of Overseas Imperialism 265
22 A Savage War to End All Wars, and a Failed Peace 287
23 The Decade That Roared and Wept 304
24 FDR and His Deal for a Desperate Time 326
25 From Isolationism to a Second World Conflagration 359
26 Just How Good Was the "Good War"? 380
27 A Cruel, Costly, and Anxious Cold War 419
28 JFK's Cold War Chains 463
29 Vietnam, an American Tragedy 487
30 Civil Rights, a Dream Deferred 507
31 Nixon's Dark Legacy 527
32 Carter's Cage of Crisis 541
33 The Reagan Revolution 554
34 Bush the Elder - Struggling in Reagan's Shadow 579
35 Bill Clinton, the New Democrat 596
36 Bush II and the Birth of Forever War 612
37 The Obama Disappointment 623
Epilogue: A Once, Always, and Future Empire 639
Endnotes 649
Bibliography 653
Index 657