The Rise and Fall of the White Republic

The Rise and Fall of the White Republic:Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America

  • Paperback

In this acclaimed historical study, Alexander Saxton establishes the centrality of white racism to American politics and culture. Examining images of race at a popular level – from blackface minstrelsy to the construction of the Western hero, from grassroots political culture to dime novels – as well as the philosophical constructions of the political elite, it is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America.

Reviews

  • No other book offers us such a richly detailed and elegantly written illumination of the relationship between race and the labyrinth of American party politics in the nineteenth century.

    Ron Takaki
  • This is grand history ... an extraordinary book packed with detail and argument ... destined to provoke deep self-searching among its sensitive readers—and probably also wounded cries from the old-line historical establishment.

    Paul BuhleThe Nation