Union a Finalist for a Maine Literary Award

I’m honored that my latest book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, has been named a finalist for the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction, an honor the other two books in the “series” also received. Competition will be fierce, though, as fellow Mainer Kerri Arsenault‘s Mill Town is among them.

The award is given by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, a worthy non-profit supporting the state’s literary community. The winners will be announced at this year’s (virtual) awards ceremony the evening of May 27.

For more on Union, visit the new webpage here. American Nations and American Character — which together with Union form an informal trilogy on United States nationhood and its myriad problems — won the award in 2012 and 2016 respectively.

 

Where to find signed books in coastal Maine, March 31 edition

More than a year into the pandemic I was realizing that I haven't set foot south of Portsmouth, New Hampshire since February 2020, despite having a book come out. But things are slowly loosening up as vaccinations increase and in the past week or two I've been able to sign books at a number of bookstores on the coast of Maine, where I live.

In support of local indie bookstores, I thought I'd advertise where those signed copies are right now. Proceeding from southwest to northeast....

[Update, 4/16/21: In Newington, N.H.'s Barnes & Noble as of today. (The trilogy, Lobster Coast, and Republic of Pirates.)]

In Portland: at Sherman's on Exchange Street (The American Nations trilogy and Lobster Coast) and Longfellow Books (all of them.)

In Freeport: at Sherman's. (The American Nations trilogy and Lobster Coast) 

In Brunswick: at Gulf of Maine Books. (Ditto)

In Augusta: at Barnes & Noble. (American Nations, Lobster Coast, Republic of Pirates, Union.)

[Update, 4/15/21: In Damariscotta at Sherman's (ditto).]

[Update, 4/30/21: In Camden at Owl & Turtle. (All save Ocean's End.)

In Belfast: at Left Bank Books. These copies:

In Bucksport: at BookStacks. (Union, American Nations, American Character.)

In Castine: at Compass Rose Books. These copies:

In Blue Hill: Blue Hill Books. These titles:

Bar Harbor: at Sherman's flagship store. This mountain of books:

Thanks for your support of your local bookstore, wherever you live.

How we got here, the stakes and where we go now (in Washington Monthly)

The United States, which was a state before it came up with an argument for being a nation as well, has always been vulnerable to dissolution. An accidental alliance of stateless nations -- the regional cultures described in American Nations -- it had to invent a national story to paper over the massive (and enduring) differences between its component sections (a story told in Union.)

As the social contract our liberal democratic system relies on has been weakened by decades of drift into more extreme forms of individual liberty -- the story told in American Character -- it's now under direct attack again by authoritarian ethnonationalism. It threatens to destroy both the federation and the republic.

How did this happen? What is the nature of the problem? How do we respond to reverse the damage. My thoughts laid out in the new issue of Washington Monthly, written in early December when we were already trundling toward the attempted coup on January 6. 

For more, please consider the three books of the American Nations trilogy, starting with Union.

Thanks to Real Clear Politics for plugging the article earlier this week and to Monthly editors Paul Glastis and Daniel Block for their suggestions and improvements to the piece.

My last print edition story for Washington Monthly was this review of John Keane's The New Despotism.

Speaking about Union and how the U.S. survives via Trinity Wall Street, Nov 12

Before the pandemic struck, I was looking forward to traveling to lower Manhattan this week to speak as part of Trinity Wall Street Church's Trinity Commons series. But things are as they are [gestures vaguely around in all directions] and so we'll be doing this event virtually. The good news is all of you can attend, wherever you are.

The event kicks off November 12 at 6:30 pm and you can register here. It's a conversation format with Trinity's Priest-in-charge and Vicar, the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson.

I'll be talking about the vulnerabilities of the U.S. as a nation, federation, and republic, our struggle to forge a story of shared purpose, and what we need to do to survive going forward. These are, of course, the topics of my new book Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, and American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good. Together they form a trilogy and, I hope, provide informed paths forward for a beleaguered republic and the "great hope" it has long represented.

So do join us if you can. Stay safe out there and pray, if you do that sort of thing, that better times are ahead for the U.S. and the world.

(An unrelated programing note: if you happen to live in Denmark, I'll be you guest later today (Nov. 7) on Danish national television, talking about our election.)

 

Talking with CBC-Nova Scotia about the 400-year backstory to the 2020 election

The rest of the world is trying to understand what's going on with the United States and its (currently not quite resolved) election. 

So I very much enjoyed sharing the backstory (via the American Nations - American Character - Union trilogy) with CBC-Nova Scotia this morning for their longform Mainstreet program. It broadcast today, but can also be heard as a podcast here.

Last week I spoke with CBC-New Brunswick  (about Maine's role) and Denmark's Zetland Magasin about the grand American backstory.

Hope you're all getting more sleep than I am. But if you live in the United States, I very much doubt it.

Talking UNION with KERA's Think

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of being the guest on "Think," the long-format interview show produced by KERA, the NPR affiliate for Dallas, and carried on public radio stations across Texas and in fourteen other states. Thanks to Krys Boyd for an enjoyable conversation about Union and the struggle to define United States nationhood, which you can hear online here.

I was last on "Think" four years ago, speaking about American Character, a book about the American conflict between individual liberty and the common good, which is unfortunately extremely relevant in these pandemic times.

Also, tonight at 8 pm Eastern consider joining this virtual book party for Union, where you can also order signed or personalized copies that will then be shipped to your door.

American Nations and the geography of the pandemic

The geography of the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic follows, like so many other things in American life, the fissures of identified in American Nations to a startling degree. I wrote about this briefly back in early April for Washington Monthly, when there was a notable divergence in the public policy response. With the Trump administration abdicating leadership, we're now seeing the case trends following these regional contours.

With the help of my Press Herald colleague Chad Gilley and the New York Times's county-level case data, we crunched and graphed the numbers and presented the results in this article in this week's Maine Sunday Telegram. There are detailed data tables for each of the eleven "nations" in the sidebar if you click through. It follows the individual liberty vs common good divide I discussed in American Character.

If you're not familiar with American Nations, here's the publisher's book description, a New York Times OpEd on how it trumps the rural/urban divide in US politics; a Washington Monthly piece on how it doomed the Tea Party, another piece on his it drives differences in violence and gun policy, and an analysis of the 2016 presidential election.

Talking with the AP about individual liberty, the common good, and the coronavirus

Had an enjoyable conversation with national Associated Press writer Ted Anthony recently about a topic close to my heart: the conflict between individual liberty and the common good and how it applies to the politics of the pandemic here in the increasingly disunited United States. It's something I wrote a book about -- minus the Covid-19 part -- called American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.

Anthony's story came out yesterday and, I'm happy to say, has been picked up by dozens of newspapers and the webpages of television stations across the country including The Miami Herald, Denver Post , Minneapolis Star-Tribune, San Diego Union-Tribune, Fox-5 (NYC), Seattle Times, Yahoo News and Real Clear Politics. The Chicago Tribune kindly translated it into Spanish.

I've only written one piece on coronavirus political geography -- how the response falls along American Nations lines -- which appeared over at Washington Monthly last month.

[Update, 5/26/20: The Bangor Daily News published this staff editorial on this issue, centered on the AP article and, to some extent, my contribution to it.]

The American Nations and the Geography of the Pandemic Response

Depressingly, as the global coronavirus pandemic unfolded, President Trump took measures that helped it along: denying it existed; denying it was more serious than the seasonal flu; denying it was no longer contained; claiming it was a hoax perpetrated by his enemies in politics and the media. State and local leaders have been left on their own to decide what to do.

The result has been a macabre laboratory of federalism, where states decided whether or not to protect their citizens and economy from a clear and inevitable threat. The geography of the response has been sobering.

As I wrote in American Nations and further explored in its sequel, American Character, the fundamental philosophical divide between these regional cultures is over the question of how best to organize American society. Three large and important ones have cultures that see freedom’s path lying almost exclusively with individual liberty and personal sovereignty. Four other large ones prioritize the common good and the building of a free community, even if it requires sacrifices of individuals. Corona-19 proved a test of these values.

Over at Washington Monthly you can read the disturbing match of our centuries-old cultural geography to the geography of the pandemic response. Let me know what you think.

Talking American Nations and Union with the Tides of History podcast

I recently spent an enjoyable hour being interviewed by Patrick Wyman on his Wondery podcast "Tides of History." We covered a lot of turf, from American Nations to the material in my forthcoming Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood and I hope you'll enjoy it.

The episode premiered March 19 and you can find it at all the usual podcast depots including Wondery, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Here's Patrick's intro:

Few books have influenced my view of American history and politics more than Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. We've been divided since the beginning, Woodard argues, and this has influenced every aspect of American history, not to mention its future. He has a new book coming out in May, Union, which expands this thesis further.

Next time we'll have to talk about pirates.

Speaking (a lot) about most everything at Star Island's Natural History Week, June 20-27

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be the annual speaker on Star Island, Isles of Shoals, for this year's Natural History Week, held June 20 to 27. [Update, 5/4/2020: Star Island's entire summer season has been cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic.]

Natural History Week - "Living in a Changing World" -- is held each year on the bucolic island, located off the coast of southern New Hampshire, but in a small archipelago that straddles the border with Maine. Attendees spend the whole week on the island, enjoying its beauty and nature by day, and attending daily talks by your truly and others. 

During the week I'll be speaking on:

* the crisis in the world's oceans (topic of my first book, Ocean's End: Travels Through Endangered Seas) and the warming of the Gulf of Maine (subject of a Portland Press Herald series I wrote that was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize.)

* the cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine (subject of my second book, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier) and a forthcoming Press Herald series tied to Maine's Bicentennial this year.

* the true story, reassembled from archival sources, of the great Caribbean pirate gang led by Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and others -- pirates who plied the waters of the Gulf of Maine as well as the Spanish Main. (A story told in The Republic of Pirates.)

* the reasons why the United Staes is polarized and paralyzed, which have their origins in the differences between the distinct colonial projects on the eastern and southwestern rims of what is now the United States, subject of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America.

* and perhaps American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good and the new book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, to be released June 16th, as well.

Registration information at their website, and further information at Star Island Corp's mother ship. I look forward to meeting those of you who decide to attend.

In Boston, talking about American nationhood and its problems with The American Question.

Spent yesterday in the belly of the beast, the old Massachusetts Bay Colony, doing an interview for this forthcoming documentary film project, The American Question. Filmmakers Guy Seemann and James Kicklighter are asking what holds us together, as communities or as a nation and I enjoyed sharing my take. Found myself talking a lot about the themes in Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, which comes out in June 2020.

Found myself at one point standing, unexpectedly, at the spot on the edge of Boston Common where a (mostly African-American) crowd protested the release of the Klan-loving The Birth of a Nation back in 1915, which features in Union. The Tremont Theater was across Tremont Avenue. Now, appropriately enough, there's a gigantic AMC Loews Theater on the site.

United States nationhood and my forthcoming book

I recently completed my sixth book, which I expect will be on sale in the summer 2020. It's on the struggle to create a story of United States nationhood, told via the lives of the key figures who fought it out in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

I'll have a lot more to say about it in the coming months, but I riffed a little on some of the themes in this blog post for the Law & Liberty blog, "The fraught battle to create an American nationhood." (That should really read "United States Nationhood," of course.) Hope you enjoy this small hors d'oeuvre.

This was itself a product of an academic symposium I participated in out in Boulder, Colorado this winter on "Liberty and the American Character." Some of my fellow participants have blog posts on their takes on this topic, including Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen, Villanova's Colleen Sheehan, and Michigan State dean emeritus William B. Allen.

A colloquium in Boulder

Earlier this month I participated in a small colloquium out in Boulder on "Liberty and the American Character," featuring a mostly conservative group of scholars and thought leaders, many of them trained in political philosophy. Five of us presented papers -- mine used ideas in American Nations, American Character and a forthcoming book on the struggle to create America's first myth of national purpose to show why U.S. self-definition an especially fragile and vital project -- and all fifteen discussed them. It offered a fascinating window into how conservative academics trained specifically in republican theory look upon the republic's contemporary crisis.

A few takeaways:

This group -- convened by Michigan State University's Willam Allen and including Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, New York University's Lawrence Mead, Mark Lilla of Columbia University (and the New York Review of Books), and Colleen Sheehan of Villanova -- sees a pressing threat to liberal democracy. For most, however, the threat that preoccupies them is that which identity politics presents to liberal education at universities. Without prodding -- occasionally provided by yours truly -- Trump and Trumpism played surprisingly little role in the conversations. When it came up, most voiced concerns, but the gravitational pull of the identity politics issue was too great to allow this the topic to ever achieve escape velocity. I personally found this fascinating and, on an intellectual level, extremely difficult to understand. (Even if you think Trumpism is a good thing, it's clearly a topic for debate.)

Lawrence Mead, the intellectual force behind welfare reform of the 1990s, presented a shocking paper apparently based on his new book, which was released yesterday. The paper argued that people descended from "non-western" cultures are unfit for the rigors of American republican citizenship and undermine the nation's vitality. This included African-Americans on the theory that -- despite eight to twelve generations in this country and a legacy of slavery that included the intentional destruction of family units and associated cultural transmission -- they retain African, "non-western" cultural characteristics. Ditto for Asians (despite doing better than whites in academic attainment), Latinos, and everyone else not descended from Europeans who, even if their people came from feudal Russia or Sicily, are apparently especially fit for the rigors of liberal democratic life. This paper was not well received.

Most of the session on my paper stuck to the opening part on the American Nations paradigm, defining terms (nation, state, cultural transmission) and probing its relevance. The message of longstanding structural disunity seemed to dissatisfy some participants, particularly when applied to undercut things like the universal relevance of Tocqueville's observations on (Yankee) municipal government or the legacy of Puritan values for the Founders. [Update, 9/12/19: Here's a blog post I wrote in connection with my contribution.]

I had a few hours free one morning and drove through the Rockies, stopping at Estes Park to see The Stanley, the hotel that inspired Steven King to write The Shining (after a creepy 1974 stay in Room 217.) After this photo on Facebook, I leaned from fellow Mainers that the hotel was built by the Stanleys of my home county in western Maine, and used to entertain their friends from Kingfield, one of the four hamlets that made up my school district. See, I've always been the caretaker.

Speaking on American Nations / American Character, Bath, Maine, Mar. 2

I'm pleased to be speaking about North American regionalism, the central political argument it has fostered over the past 400 years, how it interacts with Trumpism, and the path forward to shoring up the world's oldest liberal democracy.... all on March 2nd at the Patten Free Library in Bath, Maine.

The event, based on American Nations and American Character, kicks off at 10:30 am and is free and open to the public. More details here.

My next American Character talk is at the HR Policy Association annual meeting in Orlando later in March, but that one isn't open to the public at large.

Talking American Nations and the midterms on KABC Los Angeles

While Americans were voting, I rejoined Peter Tilden at Los Angeles' talk radio mega station KABC to discuss American Nations, American Character, and the implications for the midterms. Our conversation is available online as a podcast here. (See the Nov. 6, 2018 link.)

My prediction came true: Democrats made substantial gains in the US House in Yankeedom and the Midlands, flipping seats in Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, upstate New York, northern Illinois and (likely) Maine. Their other gains at this hour were almost entirely in Tidewater, El Norte, New Netherland and the Far West.

I was last on KABC in February 2017.

Enjoy the show and thanks again to Tilden and producer Joe Armstrong for having me on.

A New York Times American Nations OpEd

The New York Times asked me to write an opinion piece on the political implications of American Nations recently and, to my great pleasure, accepted it and built a terrific graphics package to illustrate the paradigm.

The result was published yesterday at the Times and -- thank all of you -- shot up to be the most read piece on the entire site this morning. I've mentioned before the power of the colorized map in drawing people's attention on social media, and I'm doubly sure of it now.

Thanks to John Guida and Bill Marsh for their time and attention.

For those new to the paradigm -- and wanting to know more, a couple of quick links:

To really understand what this is all about: please do read the book.

To wade in a little deeper without the book: start with this Tufts Magazine piece, which unpacks the paradigm in more detail and uses it to analyze a public policy issue -- violence and gun control -- that isn't presented in the book at all. Or, conversely, look at this Washington Monthly article to see why the (libertarian-captured) Tea Party Movement fizzled in places candidate Trump (relatively communitarian on the stump) would make inroads.

To see more data on the rural vs urban issue: dig into this piece I did for Medium.

For more on Trump and the 2016 election: check out this at the Portland Press Herald.

To find out what's up with Alaska, Hawaii and South Florida: go here.

To see me present the whole thing in detail to an audience: CSPAN's got that.

To explore the central debate of our federal experience -- the proper balance between individual liberty and the common good -- consider reading American Nations' sequel, American Character.

Speaking at the Chautauqua Institution, July 3

On July 3 I have the honor of speaking at the Chautauqua Institution's summer speaker series on the lake in Chautauqua, New York. The event kicks off at 2:30 pm in their Hall of Philosophy.

I'll be talking about the issues raised in American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good, which was a finalist for the 2017 Chautauqua Prize. The morning session just ahead of me is with Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

For those of you attending Chautauqua this season, I look forward to meeting.

Speaking on American Nations and the gun debate, Gloucester, Mass., May 19

I'll be speaking about how the existence of the American Nations helps explain enormous geographic disparities in violence, capital punishment, and gun policies at a public event on Massachusetts' North Shore May 19.

It's the keynote of "Finding Common Ground," a four-hour symposium on gun violence and the application of the Second Amendment organized by the Gloucester Meetinghouse Foundation taking place from 2 to 6pm at the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church, and including presentations from Gloucester High School students, the commander of the area American Legion Post, and others. My talk starts at about 4. Donations welcome.

Details on the event can be found here.

I wrote on the disparities of the regional cultures in regards to these issues in this 2013 Tufts Magazine cover story.

My next public talk is July 3 at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, on the themes raised in American Character, which was a finalist for last year's Chautauqua Prize.

Talking American Character, Lobster Coast on CSPAN

The indefatigable team at CSPAN's City Tour came to Portland, Maine this summer and the segments they produced are airing this weekend, spotlighting our little city.


I was pleased to record two separate interviews with them, one on Lobster Coast and the historical and cultural background to Maine's lobster fishery, the other on American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good (from Portland Head Light.)
Here's the broadcast schedule for those. I'll post links to each segment as they come available.

Lobster Coast on "Book-TV in Portland, Maine", CSPAN-2, Saturday, October 21 during the 1203 pm Eastern broadcast.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?435268-1/lobster-coast

American Character on "Book-TV," CSPAN-3, Sunday, October 22 at 0632 am Eastern

https://www.c-span.org/video/?435270-1/american-character

Lobster Coast on "American History," CSPAN-3, Sunday, October 22 during the 2pm Eastern broadcast on Portland, Maine. (For night owls, it repeats Monday, October 23 at 0400 Eastern.)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?435268-1/lobster-coast

[Update, 11/10/17: Both segments air tonight on CSPAN-1 in a special Portland, Maine program starting at 7:06pm.]

If you're interested in American Nations, my full talk at Iowa State was carried on CSPAN-1 a couple of years back and is available here.