Overview

"The struggle between individual rights and the good of the community has been the basis of nearly every major disagreement in our history, from the debates at the Constitutional Convention to the fights surrounding the agendas of the Federalists, the Progressives, and the Tea Party. In American Character, Colin Woodard traces these key strands in American politics through the four centuries of the nation's existence, and how different regions of the country have successfully or disastrously accommodated them. Woodard argues that maintaining a liberal democracy requires finding a balance between protecting individual liberty and nurturing a free society. Going to either libertarian or collectivist extremes results in tyranny. But where does the ""sweet spot"" lie in the United States, a federation of disparate regional cultures that have always strongly disagreed on these issues? Woodard leads readers on a riveting and revealing journey through four centuries of struggle, experimentation, successes and failures to provide an answer."

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9781665151023

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Colin Woodard is a New York Times bestselling writer-historian, and journalist who has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents. A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The San Francisco Chronicle, he is a reporter at the Portland Press Herald, where he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian, and Politico. He is the author of American Nations, American Character, The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean's End and lives in Maine. Jonathan Yen is a commercial voice-over artist and Earphones Award-winning audiobook narrator. He was inspired by the Golden Age of Radio, and while the gold was gone by the time he got there, he has carried that inspiration through to commercial work, voice acting, and stage productions. From vintage Howard Fast science fiction to naturalist Paul Rosolie's true adventures in the Amazon, he loves to tell a good story.

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