Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University. She is the author of North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000), The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006) and editor of Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War (2003) and Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States (2010).

“Susan-Mary Grant's vigorous new history of the United States is the ideal text for our troubled times. A fast-paced account of the martial roots of American national identity, it fairly bristles with insight, information, and indignation. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the making of today's uneasy superpower.” – Robert Cook, Professor of American History, University of Sussex

• Introduction; 1. New found land: imagining America; 2. A city on a hill: the origins of a redeemer nation; 3. The cause of all mankind: from colonies to Common Sense; 4. Self-evident truths: founding the revolutionary republic; 5. The last, best hope of Earth: toward the second American revolution; 6. Westward the course of empire: from union to nation; 7. A promised land: gateway to the American century; 8. The soldier's faith: conflict and conformity; 9. Beyond the last frontier: a new deal for America; 10. A land in transition: America in the atomic age; 11. Armies of the night: counterculture and counterrevolution.

Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University. She is the author of North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000), The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006) and editor of Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War (2003) and Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States (2010).

“Susan-Mary Grant's vigorous new history of the United States is the ideal text for our troubled times. A fast-paced account of the martial roots of American national identity, it fairly bristles with insight, information, and indignation. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the making of today's uneasy superpower.” – Robert Cook, Professor of American History, University of Sussex

• Introduction; 1. New found land: imagining America; 2. A city on a hill: the origins of a redeemer nation; 3. The cause of all mankind: from colonies to Common Sense; 4. Self-evident truths: founding the revolutionary republic; 5. The last, best hope of Earth: toward the second American revolution; 6. Westward the course of empire: from union to nation; 7. A promised land: gateway to the American century; 8. The soldier's faith: conflict and conformity; 9. Beyond the last frontier: a new deal for America; 10. A land in transition: America in the atomic age; 11. Armies of the night: counterculture and counterrevolution.

Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University. She is the author of North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era (2000), The War for a Nation: The American Civil War (2006) and editor of Legacy of Disunion: The Enduring Significance of the American Civil War (2003) and Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States (2010).

“Susan-Mary Grant's vigorous new history of the United States is the ideal text for our troubled times. A fast-paced account of the martial roots of American national identity, it fairly bristles with insight, information, and indignation. This book should be required reading for anyone interested in the making of today's uneasy superpower.” – Robert Cook, Professor of American History, University of Sussex

• Introduction; 1. New found land: imagining America; 2. A city on a hill: the origins of a redeemer nation; 3. The cause of all mankind: from colonies to Common Sense; 4. Self-evident truths: founding the revolutionary republic; 5. The last, best hope of Earth: toward the second American revolution; 6. Westward the course of empire: from union to nation; 7. A promised land: gateway to the American century; 8. The soldier's faith: conflict and conformity; 9. Beyond the last frontier: a new deal for America; 10. A land in transition: America in the atomic age; 11. Armies of the night: counterculture and counterrevolution.