Product Description In this monumental story of American imperial conquest and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Steven Hahn dismantles the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective that promises to be as enduring as it is controversial. It begins and ends in Mexico and, throughout, is internationalist in orientation. It challenges the political narrative of “sectionalism,” emphasizing the national footing of slavery and the struggle between the northeast and Mississippi Valley for continental supremacy. It places the Civil War in the context of many domestic rebellions against state authority, including those of Native Americans. It fully incorporates the trans-Mississippi west, suggesting the importance of the Pacific to the imperial vision of political leaders and of the west as a proving ground for later imperial projects overseas. It reconfigures the history of capitalism, insisting on the centrality of state formation and slave emancipation to its consolidation. It identifies a sweeping era of “reconstructions” in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that simultaneously laid the foundations for corporate liberalism and social democracy.    About the Author Steven Hahn is a professor of history at New York University. His previous work of history, A Nation Under Our Feet, received the Pulitzer Prize in History (2004), the Bancroft Prize in History (2004), and the Merle Curti Prize in Social History (2004), and was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize.Barry Press, an active professional actor, director, and teacher for over thirty-five years, has performed Off-Broadway and at numerous regional theaters. The winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award, Barry has been an active voice talent for books in a variety of genres.