Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America
Scott Gac
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Born in Blood investigates one of history's most violent undertakings: The United States of America. People the world over consider violence in the United States as measurably different than that which troubles the rest of the globe, citing reasons including gun culture, the American West, Hollywood, the death penalty, economic inequality, rampant individualism, and more. This compelling examination of American violence explains a political culture of violence from the American Revolution to the Gilded Age, illustrating how physical force, often centered on racial hierarchy, sustained the central tenets of American liberal government. It offers an important story of nationhood, told through the experiences and choices of civilians, Indians, politicians, soldiers, and the enslaved, providing historical context for understanding how violence has shaped the United States from its inception.
Product Details
Price
$29.95
$27.85
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Publish Date
January 18, 2024
Pages
330
Dimensions
5.9 X 9.2 X 1.3 inches | 1.65 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781316511886
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About the Author
Scott Gac is Director of American Studies and Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Trinity College and the author of Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform.
Reviews
'Violence is central to American statecraft. In this remarkable book, Scott Gac unpicks individual, group, and institutional expressions of power, refracted through race, gender, and class. It is a chilling account of how and why violence became a 'national tradition' in US history.' Joanna Bourke, author of Wounding the World: How Military Violence and War-Play Invades Our Lives
'Scott Gac's ambitious and passionate book traces the emergence of a particularly American idea of when, why, for whom and against whom the powerful, and particularly the government, ought to use violence. Gac proposes the growth of this violent tradition as a throughline with which to rethink our national narrative, particularly through 1877, but also beyond. He reveals continuities among the violence of enslavement and lynching, capitalist violence, military violence, and frontier violence, and in doing so dramatically changes the significance of people and events you thought you knew, from George Washington to Revolutionary soldiers, to Robert Smalls, to striking railroad workers.' Elaine S. Frantz, author of Ku Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction
'Scott Gac's Born in Blood illuminates the endemic violence along the front edge of the catastrophe more commonly known as American Freedom.' Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
'Scott Gac's ambitious and passionate book traces the emergence of a particularly American idea of when, why, for whom and against whom the powerful, and particularly the government, ought to use violence. Gac proposes the growth of this violent tradition as a throughline with which to rethink our national narrative, particularly through 1877, but also beyond. He reveals continuities among the violence of enslavement and lynching, capitalist violence, military violence, and frontier violence, and in doing so dramatically changes the significance of people and events you thought you knew, from George Washington to Revolutionary soldiers, to Robert Smalls, to striking railroad workers.' Elaine S. Frantz, author of Ku Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction
'Scott Gac's Born in Blood illuminates the endemic violence along the front edge of the catastrophe more commonly known as American Freedom.' Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
