American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

Colin Woodard

Penguin, Sep 29, 2011 - History - 384 pages

An illuminating history of North America's eleven rival cultural regions that explodes the red state-blue state myth.

North America was settled by people with distinct religious, political, and ethnographic characteristics, creating regional cultures that have been at odds with one another ever since. Subsequent immigrants didn't confront or assimilate into an “American” or “Canadian” culture, but rather into one of the eleven distinct regional ones that spread over the continent each staking out mutually exclusive territory.

In American Nations, Colin Woodard leads us on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, and the rivalries and alliances between its component nations, which conform to neither state nor international boundaries. He illustrates and explains why “American” values vary sharply from one region to another. Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good)  reveals how intranational differences have played a pivotal role at every point in the continent's history, from the American Revolution and the Civil War to the tumultuous sixties and the "blue county/red county" maps of recent presidential elections. American Nations is a revolutionary and revelatory take on America's myriad identities and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and are molding our future.

From the Hardcover edition.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Vicki_Weisfeld - LibraryThing

By Colin Woodard – This 2011 book—a pick of my book club—is a thought-provoking analysis of the different cultural strains, mostly organized along geographic lines, that make up what author Sarah ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - bohannon - LibraryThing

I finished this over the summer of 2015, and it has quickly become the second book* I recommend to anyone wishing to have a better structural understanding of the US. The author takes an approach more ...

About the author

Colin Woodard is a Maine native and the author of Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas. He is a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
• Author: Colin Woodard
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2011
• ISBN: 1101544457, 9781101544457
• Length: 384 pages
• Subjects: History / Historical Geography; History / North America; Social Science / Human Geography