From Puritan Idealism and Southern Romanticism to an Ethnonationalist State

Review of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood Book by Colin Woodard

This is about the struggle to formulate the post-George Washington national narrative – the us and them story to bind Americans together in “a more perfect union”. From a mix of novelists, historians, activists, politicians, and film makers, the book covers US history into Woodrow Wilson’s Presidency; there, the accepted narrative reached a kind of stas…