Edward Ayers is a rare and distinctively gifted American historian...American Visions does not wallow in our national sins even as it vividly reveals them; it does not celebrate except to help us see how so many different kinds of Americans had their eyes on the anxious future. Read this ye who are weary of bad prose, narrow and politicized history, and see how unpredictable the past can be. Ayers's new book is a literary achievement worthy of that moment when Emerson opened his copy of Leaves of Grass.--David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass

Within the pandora's box of antebellum America, Edward L. Ayers finds hope from a dazzling array of eloquent prophets, secular and sacred. In vivid prose and with keen insight, American Visions reveals many alluring futures for our embattled republic.--Alan Taylor, author of American Republics

Edward L. Ayers reveals a deeply contested but also very American way of envisioning possibility and promise. A page-turning tour de force by one of our most visionary historians.--Kathleen DuVal, author of Independence Lost

[A] triumphant scholarly synthesis that depicts a broad range of figures--authors, reformers, pseudoscientists, mystics, showmen, and more--who made this period one of the most fascinating and important times in American history.--David S. Reynolds, author of Abe

In vivid prose, Ayers etches diverse Americans on the move and at odds in this energetic guide to artistic, literary, utopian, and pragmatic impulses in the United States across six critical decades. May this account of earlier Americans' sense of possibility spur us to reimagine our own world.--Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done

Agile...and illuminating.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Ayers' accurate, balanced, and compelling history proves that progress is possible and that patriotism can be rooted in the complicated truths about the past.-- "Booklist"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2023-10-24

Length: 368 pages