"An extraordinary book."

—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

Having won independence from England, America faced a new question: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not? E Pluribus Unum is a spirited look at how that question came to be answered.

That the American people introduced a governmental system adequate to check the very forces unleashed by the Revolution—this, writes Professor McDonald, "was the miracle of the age. . . . The French, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, all the planet's peoples in their turn, would become so unrestrained as to lose contact with sanity. The Americans might have suffered a similar history had they followed the lead of those who, in 1787 and 1788, spoke in the name . . . of popular 'rights.' But there were giants on the earth in those days, and they spoke in the name of the nation. . . ."

Forrest McDonald is Professor of History at the University of Alabama.