The Coming of Democracy
Presidential Campaigning in the Age of Jackson
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The Coming of Democracy
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Narrated by:
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Chris Andrew Ciulla
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By:
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Mark R. Cheathem
About this listen
In The Coming of Democracy, Mark R. Cheathem examines the evolution of presidential campaigning from 1824 to 1840. Addressing the roots of early republic cultural politics - from campaign biographies to songs, political cartoons, and public correspondence between candidates and voters - Cheathem asks the listener to consider why such informal political expressions increased so dramatically during the Jacksonian period. What sounded and looked like mere entertainment, he argues, held important political meaning. The extraordinary voter participation rate - more than 80 percent - in the 1840 presidential election indicated that both substantive issues and cultural politics drew Americans into the presidential selection process.
Drawing on period newspapers, diaries, memoirs, and public and private correspondence, The Coming of Democracy is the first book-length treatment to reveal how presidents and presidential candidates used both old and new forms of cultural politics to woo voters and win elections in the Jacksonian era.
This audiobook will appeal to anyone interested in US politics, the Jacksonian/antebellum era, or the presidency.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A timely review of the threat to the nation of a President who is unlistening to the “better angels of our nature.”
- By Karl R. Walko on 02-28-24
By: Robert S. Levine
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James Madison
- America's First Politician
- By: Jay Cost
- Narrated by: Dan Woren
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 108
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Good listen
- By James Shannon on 06-27-22
By: Jay Cost
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What It Took to Win
- A History of the Democratic Party
- By: Michael Kazin
- Narrated by: Lee Goettl
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 39
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 37
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 37
In What It Took to Win, the eminent historian Michael Kazin identifies and assesses the Democratic Party's long-running commitment to creating "moral capitalism" - a system that mixed entrepreneurial freedom with the welfare of workers and consumers. And yet the same party that championed the rights of the white working man also vigorously protected or advanced the causes of slavery, segregation, and Indian removal.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Timely and informative History Book
- By Asha Sceanca on 03-24-22
By: Michael Kazin
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Fears of a Setting Sun
- The Disillusionment of America's Founders
- By: Dennis C. Rasmussen
- Narrated by: Keith Sellon-Wright
- Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 93
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 80
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 80
Americans seldom deify their Founding Fathers any longer, but they do still tend to venerate the Constitution and the republican government that the founders created. Strikingly, the founders themselves were far less confident in what they had wrought, particularly by the end of their lives. In fact, most of them - including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson - came to deem America's constitutional experiment an utter failure that was unlikely to last beyond their own generation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A different perspective on the founders
- By kpa on 03-04-24
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Lincoln in Private
- What His Most Personal Reflections Tell Us About Our Greatest President
- By: Ronald C. White
- Narrated by: Ronald C. White
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 47
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 42
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Story5 out of 5 stars 42
A deeply private man, shut off even to those who worked closely with him, Abraham Lincoln often captured “his best thoughts", as he called them, in short notes to himself. He would work out his personal stances on the biggest issues of the day, never expecting anyone to see these pieces of writing, which he’d then keep close at hand, in desk drawers and even in his top hat. The profound importance of these notes has been overlooked, because the originals are scattered across several different archives and have never before been brought together and examined as a coherent whole.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A Good One--Highly Recommend
- By Jeffy on 04-18-23
By: Ronald C. White
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Henry Clay
- The Man Who Would Be President
- By: James C. Klotter
- Narrated by: James Anderson Foster
- Length: 19 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 48
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Story5 out of 5 stars 47
Charismatic, charming, and one of the best orators of his era, Henry Clay seemed to have it all. He offered a comprehensive plan of change for America, and he directed national affairs as Speaker of the House, as Secretary of State to John Quincy Adams - the man he put in office - and as acknowledged leader of the Whig party. As the broker of the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850, Henry Clay fought to keep a young nation united when westward expansion and slavery threatened to tear it apart. Yet, despite his talent and achievements, Henry Clay never became president.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful book by a talented writer and historian
- By Timothy on 08-24-18
By: James C. Klotter
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A Magnificent Catastrophe
- The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign
- By: Edward J. Larson
- Narrated by: John Dossett
- Length: 6 hrs
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 60
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 46
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Story4 out of 5 stars 46
A Magnificent Catastrophe tells the story of the most perverse, bizarre, nail-biting, and influential election battle ever in U.S. history: America's first true presidential campaign, and a contest so important to the future of the country that Jefferson referred to it as "the second American Revolution" because the outcome resolved so much unfinished business about just what kind of government we would have. This election in many ways determined just how democratic a country we would be.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Get this if you have to use it for a class!!!
- By Gabriel on 03-03-17
By: Edward J. Larson
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The Words That Made Us
- America's Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840
- By: Akhil Reed Amar
- Narrated by: Fajer Al-Kaisi
- Length: 27 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 76
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 76
In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered. His account of the document's origins and consolidation is a guide for anyone seeking to properly understand America's Constitution today.
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5 out of 5 stars
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And the words that made Us
- By Anonymous User on 10-17-22
By: Akhil Reed Amar
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Thaddeus Stevens
- Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice
- By: Bruce Levine
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 49
Thaddeus Stevens was among the first to see the Civil War as an opportunity for a second American revolution - a chance to remake the country as a genuine multiracial democracy. As one of the foremost abolitionists in Congress in the years leading up to the war, he was a leader of the young Republican Party’s radical wing, fighting for anti-slavery and anti-racist policies long before party colleagues like Abraham Lincoln endorsed them. These policies - including welcoming black men into the Union’s armies - would prove crucial to the Union war effort.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Excellent bio of a political hero
- By Anonymous User on 03-11-21
By: Bruce Levine
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Apostles of Disunion
- Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War: Fifteenth Anniversary Edition
- By: Charles B. Dew
- Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian
- Length: 4 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 69
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 58
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 57
Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion has established itself as a modern classic and an indispensable account of the Southern states’ secession from the Union. Addressing topics still hotly debated among historians and the public at large more than a century and a half after the Civil War, the book offers a compelling and clearly substantiated argument that slavery and race were at the heart of our great national crisis.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Racist Take - Leaves our a lot of information
- By naw74 on 04-15-21
By: Charles B. Dew
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Machine Made
- Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
- By: Terry Golway
- Narrated by: Adam Grupper
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 73
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 70
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
For decades, history has considered Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a critical chapter of American political history. In Machine Made, historian and New York City journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these stereotypes.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A missed opportunity
- By Kathy on 05-27-15
By: Terry Golway
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These Truths
- A History of the United States
- By: Jill Lepore
- Narrated by: Jill Lepore
- Length: 29 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,337
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 2,080
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2,042
In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation. In riveting prose, These Truths tells the story of America, beginning in 1492, to ask whether the course of events has proven the nation's founding truths or belied them.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good Story but distracting sound engineering
- By MindSpiker on 11-21-18
By: Jill Lepore
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Give Me Liberty
- A History of America's Exceptional Idea
- By: Richard Brookhiser
- Narrated by: Tony Messano
- Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 34
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 31
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 30
Nationalism is inevitable: It supplies feelings of belonging, identity, and recognition. It binds us to our neighbors and tells us who we are. But increasingly - from the United States to India, from Russia to Burma - nationalism is being invoked for unworthy ends: to disdain minorities or to support despots. As a result, nationalism has become to many a dirty word.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Extraordinary!
- By Cynthia M. Suprenant on 12-23-19
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American Heritage History of the Presidents
- By: Michael R. Beschloss
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 25 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 119
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 102
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 100
From George Washington's reluctant oath-taking through George W. Bush's leadership challenges after September 11, 2001, we view ambitious and fallible men through the new lens of the 21st century. Where did they succeed? Where did they fail? And what do we know now that we could not have known at the time?
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good but Far from Great
- By Michael on 07-11-20