Alan Taylor is a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian who has authored, among other works, the core books for three very well-received PLATO SDGs: American Colonies, The Settling of North America, American Revolutions, A Continental History, 1750-1804; and The Civil War of 1812. His broad view of American history, his excellent writing, and his unique insights were praised by past SDG members in these courses. His most recent work, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850, is the winner of The New York Historical Society’s 2022 Book Prize in American History. Like his other works, it has been described as “…sweeping, beautifully written, prodigiously researched and myth-busting.”
American Republics is the third in the series of Taylor's works that began with the colonial period (American Colonies) and ended in 1804 (American Revolutions) . It tells the story of the fragile American Republic during the period from the end of America’s war of independence until the Compromise of 1850.
As he has in his earlier works, Taylor challenges the myths that we learned in school, painting a picture of a fragmented America beset by conflict, white supremacy, and violent aggression towards Indians and Blacks. The period of this new work is one of territorial expansion through war, violence and land grabs, and of bitter conflicts among its own people and states. As he has in his earlier works, Taylor studies this period through different perspectives, including those of its native peoples, both enslaved and free Blacks, and of the peoples and rulers of Canada, the West Indies, Mexico, and Europe. He (and our SDG ) will also study the competing Hamiltonian/Jeffersonian visions of America, the bitter divisions over slavery that threatened the survival of the Republic, the American economy, the War with Mexico, the Donner Party, Shakerism, and much more. American Republics also portrays many memorable characters, including Sojourner Truth, Andrew Jackson, Adams, Clay, Calhoun and Webster and writers like Cooper, Irving, Poe and Emerson, and many more. This will be an SDG that PLATO members interested in American history will love.
This SDG will be coordinated jointly by Sam Pryor and Paul Markowitz.
