Description: This volume traces how American literature evolved in response to widespread conflicts over the very nature of US democracy in the early republic and antebellum eras. It examines how American writers reacted to three moments of profound divisiveness in the 1790s, 1830s, and 1850s.
Review Quotes: "Literary texts by such post-national liberals would undoubtedly provoke the same kind of searching analyses Reznick here so ably dedicates to his nationalist novelists, but the subsequent civic lessons might be more valuable to us today." -- Transatlantica