Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877

by Brenda Wineapple

A New York Times Notable Book

Dazzling in scope, Ecstatic Nation illuminates one of the most dramatic and momentous chapters in America’s past, when the country dreamed big, craved new lands and new freedom, and was bitterly divided over its great moral wrong: slavery.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 2013

About the author

Brenda Wineapple is the author of the award-winning Hawthorne: A Life, Genêt: A Biography of Janet Flanner, and Sister Brother: Gertrude and Leo Stein. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many publications, among them The American Scholar, The New York Times Book Review, Parnassus, Poetry, and The Nation. A Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and twice of the National Endowment for the Humanities, she teaches in the MFA programs at Columbia University and The New School and lives in New York City.