
The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic
Reconstruction, 1860-1920
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Narrated by:
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Deepa Samuel
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By:
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Manisha Sinha
About this listen
A groundbreaking, expansive new account of Reconstruction that fundamentally alters our view of this formative period in American history.
In The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, acclaimed historian Manisha Sinha expands our view beyond the accepted temporal and spatial bounds of Reconstruction, which is customarily said to have begun in 1865 with the end of the war, and to have come to a close when the "corrupt bargain" of 1877 put Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House in exchange for the fall of the last southern Reconstruction state governments. Sinha's startlingly original account opens in 1860 with the election of Abraham Lincoln that triggered the secession of the Deep South states, and takes us all the way to 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which granted women the right to vote-and which Sinha calls the "last Reconstruction amendment."
A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.
©2024 Manisha Sinha (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
T. R. Fehrenbach brilliantly delineates the contrasts and conflicts between the many Mexicos, unraveling the history while weaving a fascinating tapestry of beauty and brutality: the Amerindians, who wrought from the vulnerable land a great indigenous Meso-American civilization by the first millennium BC; the successive reigns of Olmec, Maya, Toltec, and Mexic masters, who ruled through an admirably efficient bureaucracy and the power of the priests, propitiating the capricious gods with human sacrifices; the Spanish conquistadors, and much more.
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Good book bad narration
- By M. A. Chris Raine on 03-23-19
By: T. R. Fehrenbach
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The Age of Reconstruction
- How Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom Remade the World
- By: Don H. Doyle
- Narrated by: Paul Brion
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In this international history of Reconstruction, Don Doyle chronicles the world events inspired by the Civil War. Between 1865 and 1870, France withdrew from Mexico, Russia sold Alaska to the US, and Britain proclaimed the new state of Canada. British workers demanded more voting rights, Spain toppled Queen Isabella II and ended slavery in its Caribbean colonies, Cubans rose against Spanish rule, France overthrew Napoleon III, and the kingdom of Pope Pius IX fell before the Italian Risorgimento.
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Ground-breaking history, poor narration
- By mrieke on 01-13-25
By: Don H. Doyle
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Founding Partisans
- Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics
- By: H. W. Brands
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 16 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were a fatal threat to republican virtues. They had suffered the consequences of partisan politics in Britain before the American Revolution, and they wanted nothing similar for America. Yet parties emerged even before the Constitution was ratified, and they took firmer root in the following decade. In Founding Partisans, master historian H. W. Brands has crafted a fresh and lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be.
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Very educational
- By Mark Mears on 02-21-24
By: H. W. Brands
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Somewhere Toward Freedom
- By: Bennett Parten
- Narrated by: Jonathan Beville
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Historian Bennett Parten provides a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.
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History not Taught
- By Michael Neal on 07-01-25
By: Bennett Parten
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Illiberal America
- A History
- By: Steven Hahn
- Narrated by: Mitch Crawford
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That's not us,' think again: in Illiberal America, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian uncovers a powerful illiberalism as deep seated in the American past as the founding ideals.
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A good title with a vague content
- By d.l.bagnoli on 04-26-25
By: Steven Hahn
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Decade of Disunion
- How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861
- By: Robert W. Merry
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 16 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The Mexican War brought vast new territories to the United States, which precipitated a growing crisis over slavery. The new territories seemed unsuitable for the type of agriculture that depended on slave labor, but they lay south of the line where slavery was permitted by the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The subject of expanding slavery to the new territories became a flash point between North and South.
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Compromise sought unsuccessfully for a decade you could see the Civil War Coming I highly recommend thus book
- By Amazon Customer on 05-09-25
By: Robert W. Merry
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Buddenbrooks
- The Decline of a Family
- By: Thomas Mann
- Narrated by: David Rintoul
- Length: 26 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1900, when Thomas Mann was 25, Buddenbrooks is a minutely imagined chronicle of four generations of a North German mercantile family - a work so true to life that it scandalized the author’s former neighbours in his native Lübeck.
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Where Have You Been All My Life, Thomas Mann?
- By Virginia Waldron on 03-30-17
By: Thomas Mann
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When the Clock Broke
- Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s
- By: John Ganz
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 15 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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With the Soviet Union extinct, Saddam Hussein defeated, and U.S. power at its zenith, the early 1990s promised a “kinder, gentler America.” Instead, it was a period of rising anger and domestic turmoil, anticipating the polarization and resurgent extremism we know today. In When the Clock Broke, the acclaimed political writer John Ganz tells the story of America’s late-century discontents.
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Amazing history of the early 90s
- By Aaron R. Isaacson on 06-25-24
By: John Ganz
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The Second Founding
- How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
- By: Eric Foner
- Narrated by: Donald Corren
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar, a timely history of the constitutional changes that built equality into the nation's foundation and how those guarantees have been shaken over time.
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Excellent book - problematic narrator
- By Jennifer on 10-01-19
By: Eric Foner
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
Pedantic but Important
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Managing through narration
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Great overview of often overlooked history
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Valuable history, poorly edited and performed
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Likewise, the reader gives a technically proficient performance that is like listening to an overly ennuciated rack of nails on a chalkboard.
Good Topic, Poor Writing/Performance
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