Speaking on Union and the battle to define US nationhood with the German Marshall Fund, Sept. 1

On September 1 at 10:30 Eastern (4:30 CET), I'll be speaking with the German Marshall Fund's executive vice president, Derek Chollet about Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood as part of GMF's ongoing (and, now, virtual) author series.

The event is free and open to the public, but you do need to register.

[Update, 9/17/20: Thanks to all who attended -- and there were a lot of you from both sides of the Atlantic! The talk is up on YouTube here.]

Here's the invite from GMF, who I thank for hosting this event:

ONLINE EVENT

Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood

A Book Talk with Colin Woodard

 

Tuesday, September 1, 2020
10:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. EDT | 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. CET 

 

Colin Woodard

State and National Affairs Writer, Portland Press Herald

 

Derek Chollet

Executive Vice President, GMF 

 

Register for Event

 

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) is pleased to invite you to a virtual book talk with bestselling author, historian, and journalist Colin Woodard. His latest book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, describes the 19th century effort to create and propagate a national narrative for the U.S. that could unite its disparate regional cultures, a project that quickly became a battle between civic and ethnic nationalist visions for the young federation. Join Woodard and GMF Executive Vice President Derek Chollet as they discuss how the belief that the United States was or should be an American Anglo-Saxon ethnostate has confounded the country's efforts to achieve its civic ideals and continues to affect its political landscape and fundamental stability today.

If you have any questions, please contact Itai Barsade at ibarsade@gmfus.org.

Please consider supporting independent book sellers by buying a copy at bookshop.org if you are based in the United States.  

 

 

The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) strengthens transatlantic cooperation on regional, national, and global challenges and opportunities in the spirit of the Marshall Plan.

 

 

Colin Woodard, a New York Times bestselling author and historian, is the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald, where he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. A longtime foreign correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and the San Francisco Chronicle, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents. 

 

Derek Chollet is executive vice president and senior advisor for security and defense policy at GMF. Before joining GMF, he served as U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and held a number of senior positions at the White House and U.S. State Department. His forthcoming book is The Middle Way: How Three Presidents Shaped America’s Role in the World.

David Blight reviews UNION in the Washington Post

If I were to have created a wish list of eminent people who might be assigned to review my new book, David W. Blight, dean of Frederick Douglass biographers and historian of the implications of Reconstruction's collapse, would have been at the top. So I'm extremely excited that his review of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood appears in today's print edition of the Washington Post. 

Blight, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography, Frederick Douglass, writes Union makes "visions of history into a kind of human drama... with a storyteller’s pace and vividness." In conclusion:

"The subtext for this book, like so much else these days, is Woodard’s fear that the 19th-century belief in an American ethno-state (meaning white) not only survived into our own time but is reascendant in Trumpism’s assault on “liberal civic nationalism.” As Woodard warns, only fools or the ignorant will think this battle will ever really end, even when President Trump and his own profane myth are banished."

Also, on Friday I joined Jefferson Public Radio, which serves the abortive State of Jefferson in southern Oregon and northern California, to talk about the book. That interview is here.

And finally, thanks again to Politics & Prose and NPR's Tom Gjelten for holding an excellent and enjoyable virtual book event this afternoon. That interview-and-audience questions session is now up via YouTube.

Talking with NPR's Tom Gjelten via Politics and Prose, June 28

COVID-19 has forced book tours have gone virtual, and my next stop for Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood is tomorrow, June 28, and it's a very cool one.

It's hosted by Washington, DC's famed bookstore, Politics & Prose, which uses an interview-and-audience-questions format via ZOOM. I'm delighted that Tom Gjelten -- of NPR fame, author of a great book on the effects of the 1965 immigration act, and fellow former Balkans-in-the-1990s correspondent -- is serving in the role of interviewer.

The event kicks off at 1pm. You can register for the Zoom-driven event here, and can also order books directly from the store's website. I'll be signing bookplates for them to add to those who want them.

Hope to see friends from DC and beyond there. [Update, 6/28/20: Thanks to Tom and P&P for a great event. The proceedings are now up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.]

For some early reviews of Union, check out this post (Library Journal, American Scholar) and this one (Kirkus, Booklist) and reviews in The Christian Science Monitor (which also named the book to their Top Ten Books for June list) and the Washington Post (by none other than David Blight, renowned scholar of Douglass and the rolling back of the civil rights gains of the Civil War.)

US Surgeon General on American Nations and public health

I ran across this one accidentally on Twitter. Last week, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams gave the keynote address at the American Public Health Association's National Public Health Week Forum in Washington, DC.

Turns out Dr. Adams is an American Nations fan, and he spent several minutes talking about the importance of the paradigm in understanding regional differences in public health challenges and outcomes. "When you look at what's done, when you look at asset health care coverage, when you look at immigrant rights, at contraception and abortion, when you look at drug policy and reduction, two places, Paris, France and Berlin, Germany, that tried to blow each other off the face of the planet, are closer together than Dallas, Texas and Boston, Massachusetts," Adams said. "We truly are a country of different nations."

Here's a clip of his remarks culled from C-SPAN-2's coverage of the event.

Talking with PBS' White House Chronicle, WMNF's Life Elsewhere

Earlier this month, I had an enjoyable afternoon in Portland with Llewelyn King, host of the PBS interview program "White House Chronicle," which originates out of WHUT in Washington, DC. Mr. King came up to the studios of the Portland Press Herald to talk about American Nations, my book on American regionalism, and the interview is now available online.

"White House Chronicle" airs on 200 public and community television stations nationwide -- including WETA in Washington and Rhode Island Public Television -- as well as in audio on VOA and Sirius XM.

Earlier this week I had an enjoyable interview with Norman B, host of "Life Elsewhere", the syndicated public radio interview show originating out of Tampa's WMNF, on American Character and the current presidential race, a segment which ran in Tampa earlier today. Tomorrow -- Monday Mar. 21 -- you can hear it on Detroit's largest radio station, WROM at 7pm and, at 8 PT, on NWCZ radio, the Pacific Northwest podcast out of Tacoma, Washington.

Talking American Character in Washington, DC, Mar. 20

I'm looking forward to speaking about American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good at Politics & Prose, Washington, DC's storied bookstore, on March 20.

The event kicks off at 5pm at the store, 5015 Connecticut Ave, NW. Looking forward to meeting readers and seeing old friends from my D.C. days.

I'll also be the guest on the "Afternoon Drive" show on WTOP -- Washington's highest rated radio station -- at 2:10 pm on March 16.

The book tour this month also includes in Portsmouth, NH; Newburyport, Falmouth, Boston and Beverly, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine (twice); and Greenwich, Connecticut. I'll be in Europe, Oregon, and other Maine locations thereafter.

Presenting American Nations at Philanthropy Exchange 2014

I'm going to be in Washington, D.C. tomorrow to present the opening plenary talk at this year's Philanthropy Exchange 2014, the annual conference of the Council on Foundations, which represents the nation's grant-giving philanthropies.

I'm especially pleased that American Nations -- the subject of my talk -- is to set the theme for this year's conference: as I understand it, philanthropy working in (and helping perhaps overcome) a fractured nation.

Following my talk, the themes I raise will be taken up by a pretty impressive group: Jim Clifton, CEO, The Gallup Organization; Carly Dawn Hare, Executive Director, Native Americans in Philanthropy; Wendy Ramage Hawkins, Executive Director, Intel Foundation; Carol S. Larson, President and CEO, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation; Kevin K. Murphy, President, Berks County Community Foundation. [Update: Ford Foundation President and CEO Darren Walker is joining the discussion as well; the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart will be moderating.] I'm very interested in hearing what they'll have to say.

If you're down at the conference -- it's a big one -- come by and say hello. I'll be signing a few books after the plenary.

Crossbones, Episode 2: In an unrelated matter, I caught the second episode of "Crossbones" last night, the NBC drama inspired by my third book, The Republic of Pirates, and starring John Malkovich as Blackbeard. Pleased to see it got impressive ratings last night, for its time slot, with 90 percent retention in the key viewing demographic against the premier. Take that, naysayers -- and time to give the show a more high-profile time slot.

I especially enjoyed the reveal that at least one of the supporting characters is a veteran of the Jacobite Uprising of 1715, a true to life and long hidden aspect of some of the real historical pirates surrounding Blackbeard that I revealed in Republic of Pirates. (Hat tip to the late Ken Kinkor on some of that.)And the "Athenian democracy" stuff? Yes, there's some truth to that as well, but you'll have to read my book to learn more.