The paperback edition of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood goes on sale one week from today and I’m excited at the prospect of actually seeing it in stores, as the pandemic made that impossible with the hardcover launch. The book, a Christian Science Monitor Book of the Year and a finalist for this year’s Maine Literary Award, tells the story of the fight to create a “national myth” to hold the young U.S. federation together through the lives of the rival myth makers. It completes a sort of American Nations trilogy about the nature of the U.S. and how to preserve the republic and federation in a perilous era.
Please consider preordering from your favorite bookseller or any of the outlets linked to from Viking-Penguin’s page here.
If you happen to live in Maine, there are in-person launch events coming up June 17 in Portland (Longfellow Books) and June 24 in Blue Hill (Blue Hill Books via the Bagaduce Lending Library.) For details of this and other in-person events watch this space or check into the Events page at this website.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.