The Republic for Which It Stands

The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896

By: Richard White

Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine

The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multivolume history of the American nation. In the newest volume in the series, The Republic for Which It Stands, acclaimed historian Richard White offers a fresh and integrated interpretation of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age as the seedbed of modern America.

At the end of the Civil War the leaders and citizens of the victorious North envisioned the country's future as a free-labor republic, with a homogenous citizenry, both Black and White. The South and West were to be reconstructed in the image of the North. Thirty years later Americans occupied an unimagined world. The unity that the Civil War supposedly secured had proved ephemeral. The country was larger, richer, and more extensive but also more diverse. Life spans were shorter, and physical well-being had diminished, due to disease and hazardous working conditions. Independent producers had become wage earners. The country was Catholic and Jewish as well as Protestant and increasingly urban and industrial. The "dangerous" classes of the very rich and poor expanded, and deep differences - ethnic, racial, religious, economic, and political - divided society. The corruption that gave the Gilded Age its name was pervasive.

These challenges also brought vigorous efforts to secure economic, moral, and cultural reforms. Real change - technological, cultural, and political - proliferated from below more than emerging from political leadership. Americans, mining their own traditions and borrowing ideas, produced creative possibilities for overcoming the crises that threatened their country.

In a work as dramatic and colorful as the era it covers, White narrates the conflicts and paradoxes of these decades of disorienting change and mounting unrest, out of which emerged a modern nation whose characteristics resonate with the present day.

©2017 Richard White (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

Good history made unlistenable by terrible narration

I couldn't finish this one due to the narrator. He spoke in a clipped, robotic manner- almost like an AI voice. It was distracting and very weird.

A Decent History of The Gilded Age

A good history, but certainly from a working-class point of view. I would like to have heard more about social life outside of home and work, especially mutual aid societies.

Awesome read

if you are really into a well thought out discovery into the world as it was during the reconstruction, this is one I would reccomend!! research was qs good as it gets!

Outstanding

White's analysis transcends his dry academic style as he frames the second half of the 19th century centered around the concept of "the American Home" and the changes to society around it. It knits a complete picture out of one of the more complicated moments in American history.

High level history with a below average narration.

Richard White has done a great job summarizing the reconstruction and guilded age. The huge bibliography at the end is a testament to how much research went into this book. I thought the themes told a nice story of nation building after the Civil War and showed how this Era really laid a lot of the framework for how we live our lives today.

I did not like the narration. It sounded almost computerized to me. I found it difficult to keep my attention on the book, so I'm sure I didn't get everything the writer intended to portray.