
What Hath God Wrought
The Transformation of America, 1815 - 1848
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Narrated by:
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Patrick Cullen
About this listen
Pulitzer Prize, History, 2008
In this addition to the esteemed Oxford History of the United States series, historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era of revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated America's expansion and prompted the rise of mass political parties.
He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party but contends that John Quincy Adams and other advocates of public education, economic integration, and the rights of blacks, women, and Indians were the true prophets of America's future.
Howe's panoramic narrative - weaving together social, economic, and cultural history with political and military events - culminates in the controversial but brilliantly executed war against Mexico that gained California and Texas for America.
Please note: The individual volumes of the series have not been published in historical order. What Hath God Wrought is number V in The Oxford History of the United States.
Listen to more of the definitive Oxford History of the United States.©2007 Oxford University Press, Inc. (P)2009 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"He is a genuine rarity: an English intellectual who not merely writes about the United States but actually understands it." ( Washington Post)
"A stunning synthesis....it is a rare thing to encounter a book so magisterial and judicious and also so compelling." ( Chicago Tribune)
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A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian's acclaimed Civil War history of the complex man and controversial Union commander whose battlefield brilliance ensured the downfall of the Confederacy. Preeminent Civil War historian Bruce Catton narrows his focus on commander Ulysses S. Grant, whose bold tactics and relentless dedication to the Union ultimately ensured a Northern victory in the nation's bloodiest conflict.
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Riveting history with a great narration
- By Roberta Rothwell on 01-11-18
By: Bruce Catton
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Mutiny on the Bounty
- By: Peter FitzSimons
- Narrated by: Michael Carman
- Length: 22 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The mutiny on HMS Bounty, in the South Pacific on 28 April 1789, is one of history's truly great stories - a tale of human drama, intrigue and adventure of the highest order - and in the hands of Peter FitzSimons it comes to life as never before. Commissioned by the Royal Navy to collect breadfruit plants from Tahiti and take them to the West Indies, the Bounty's crew found themselves in a tropical paradise. Five months later, they did not want to leave.
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You don't know the whole story.
- By Justin Sluyter on 05-01-19
By: Peter FitzSimons
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A History of Britain: Volume 1
- By: Simon Schama
- Narrated by: Stephen Thorne
- Length: 15 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The story of Britain from the earliest settlements in 3000BC to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. To look back at the past is to understand the present. In this vivid account of over 4,000 years of British history, Simon Schama takes us on an epic journey which encompasses the very beginnings of the nation's identity, when the first settlers landed on Orkney. From the successes and failures of the monarchy to the daily life of a Roman soldier stationed on Hadrian's Wall, Schama gives a vivid, fascinating account of the many different stories and struggles that lie behind the growth of our island nation.
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Some History. Mostly a Monarchy Tabloid Rag
- By Carrie on 03-22-19
By: Simon Schama
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When Time Stopped
- A Memoir of My Father's War and What Remains
- By: Ariana Neumann
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In this remarkably moving memoir Ariana Neumann dives into the secrets of her father’s past: years spent hiding in plain sight in war-torn Berlin, the annihilation of dozens of family members in the Holocaust, and the courageous choice to build anew.
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yesterday as fresh as today
- By reader mother on 02-17-20
By: Ariana Neumann
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The Incorruptibles
- A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld
- By: Dan Slater
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the early 1900s, prior to World War I, New York City was a vortex of vice and corruption. On the Lower East Side, then the most crowded ghetto on earth, Eastern European Jews formed a dense web of crime syndicates. Gangs of horse poisoners and casino owners, pimps and prostitutes, thieves and thugs, jockeyed for dominance while their family members and neighbors toiled in the unregulated garment industry. But when the notorious murder of a gambler attracted global attention, a coterie of affluent German-Jewish uptowners decided to take matters into their own hands.
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Very Entertaining/Researched
- By ptr on 02-23-25
By: Dan Slater
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Race to the Bottom
- Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education
- By: Luke Rosiak
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Race to the Bottom, Luke Rosiak uncovers the shocking reason why American education is failing: Powerful special interest groups are using our kids as guinea pigs in vast ideological experiments. These groups’ initiatives aren’t focused on making children smarter—but on implementing a radical agenda, no matter the effect on academic standards.
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This is literally 100% propaganda.
- By Ekim N. on 03-11-22
By: Luke Rosiak
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The Impending Crisis
- America Before the Civil War: 1848-1861
- By: David M. Potter, Don E. Fehrenbacher
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 22 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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David M. Potter's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Impending Crisis is the definitive history of antebellum America. Potter's sweeping epic masterfully charts the chaotic forces that climaxed with the outbreak of the Civil War: westward expansion, the divisive issue of slavery, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's uprising, the ascension of Abraham Lincoln, and the drama of Southern secession.
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A Slog for Sure
- By Brux on 04-13-17
By: David M. Potter, and others
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Valley Forge
- By: Bob Drury, Tom Clavin
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Valley Forge is the riveting true story of an underdog US toppling an empire. Using new and rarely seen contemporaneous documents - and drawing on a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that capture the innovation and energy that led to the birth of our nation - the New York Times best-selling authors Bob Drury and Tom Clavin provide a breathtaking account of this seminal and previously undervalued moment in the battle for American independence.
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Moving story about saving the Revolution
- By LEE on 11-15-18
By: Bob Drury, and others
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Britain's War
- Volume 1, Into Battle, 1937-1941
- By: Daniel Todman
- Narrated by: Ric Jerrom
- Length: 35 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The most terrible emergency in Britain's history, the Second World War, required an unprecedented national effort. An exhausted country had to fight an unexpectedly long war and found itself much diminished amongst the victors. The outcome of the war was nonetheless a triumph, not least for a political system that proved well adapted to the demands of a total conflict and for a population who had to make many sacrifices but who were spared most of the horrors experienced in the rest of Europe.
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Great Performance, Biased with out a warning!
- By dell992 on 06-21-16
By: Daniel Todman
What listeners say about What Hath God Wrought
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Overall
- Ary Shalizi
- 04-12-11
Fantastic content, faulty narration
This book provides a comprehensive overview of US history from the end of the War of 1812 to just after the admission of California to the Union. The ebb and flow of politics provides the main narrative framework for the book, into which Howe weaves detailed discussions of the competing social, economic, religious and technological forces that slowly transformed the coastal states of the founders into a continent-spanning empire riven by internal disputes that would erupt in the Civil War and reverberate for more than a century after. Howe makes the entire era come alive by drawing on a wide variety of primary sources, from census data to the writings contemporary diarists and newspaper accounts, and incorporating many engaging quotes.
This would be a perfect listen for an avid student of American history, since it covers a frequently overlooked period (overlooked, I would add, for reasons which Howe discusses at length towards the end of the book) were it not for the truly horrible quality of the recording. The narrator is overall quite good, but the editing is probably among the worst I have ever encountered. There are noticeable jumps in audio quality and speed throughout, sometimes even within the same sentence. These imperfections are substantial enough that at times I found myself listening more to the atrocious mixing than the actual content, which was a shame.
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62 people found this helpful
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- GARY G STRIEKER
- 05-14-09
bad editing
Good book, good narrator, but the editing was horrible... leaving no pauses where they should be, running all the sentences together unnaturally. A tedious chore to listen to..almost as if the editors were trying to make the book as short as possible by crunching the sentences together as closely as they could. Never had the problem before with any other book -- I hope I never run into it again.
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40 people found this helpful
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- John
- 12-03-13
Great Content, Great Voice, Terrible Editing
What made the experience of listening to What Hath God Wrought the most enjoyable?
The content was great. This book covers a wider range of different areas of history (social, economic, government, religion, etc.) than any other history book I've listened to or read.
What didn’t you like about Patrick Cullen’s performance?
I think Patrick Cullen's voice is great. But the "performance" was terrible. I don't think Patrick was to blame here. This seems to be a purely technical issue in the post processing. I don't know if they did a lot of editing and overdubbing, or what. But it almost sounds like two different people were narrating and they were switching randomly between the two. It also seems hurried, but again, it doesn't sound like Patrick actually read it that way, i.e. perhaps some part of the processing was trying to reduce inter word gaps or something. This is by far the worst production I've come across in an audiobook. I was able to adapt to it mostly after a while, and I enjoyed the content enough to continue to endure through it to the end. But I wish they would go back to the original recordings and fix this.
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8 people found this helpful
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- William Jenks
- 06-04-19
Fundamentally reads like a (very good) textbook
I've been reading (listening to) some American history via biographies of major characters. When you get to this time frame, there are fewer really good biographies to listen to, so I selected this book to help supplement the time frame. As others have noted, it splits time pretty evenly between political and social history. I was more interested in the political history, but the author does a nice job of making the social history fit in and motivate the political history. I thus would NOT use that as a criterion to dismiss this book for those more interested in the political side of things. I came away with a lot of things that I sort of knew put into better context and explained, plus (of course) I learned a lot.
A plus is that the author is relatively neutral, but not painfully so. Partisans of Jackson and Polk might have a few feathers ruffled. In any case, he is pretty open about when he is analyzing and opining.
As others have noted, there is a bit with the reading that you just have to live with. The reader is basically very good. However, there are LOTS of obvious edits where the sound quality changes dramatically for a few seconds (as if he were using a different microphone or the recording levels were different). If you are a performance purist, I cannot deny you'll find this distracting at times. Personally, I chalked it up to the fact that this was basically a very long textbook that was never going to make a ton of money on the audio....and they decided not to spend the money fixing the edits that would be required for a "blockbuster." It's still a little annoying, but not the end of the world.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Mark T Winkler
- 02-16-21
Great book but (exceptionally) poor production quality
I’m 3 books into the Oxford history of the United States, and about 40 books into my audible life. This book was a great history and perfect answer to my goals to better understand American history. As the author states in the closing pages, this book “is a story, not an argument,” which is what I was looking for.
That said, this is by far the most disappointing production of any audio boom I have ever read. The narration has the feel that it was recorded by 6 different speakers (or one different speaker at 6 very different times of his life). It is incredibly distracting. Literally individual sentences are spliced in within a longer exposition, in which the splice is distractingly different in tone, timbre, and delivery. It is truly bizarre and like nothing I’ve ever heard in an audio book. Disappointing for such an otherwise excellent book.
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1 person found this helpful
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- J
- 10-28-11
Detailed, but not objective
What made the experience of listening to What Hath God Wrought the most enjoyable?
The high level of detail, information on prominent personalities, and many quotes from the personal journals and letters of more average people of the era.
Would you recommend What Hath God Wrought to your friends? Why or why not?
No. It is a very long, very detailed book. If that appeals to you then you might like it. Most people I know like things to move along more quickly.
What does Patrick Cullen bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
The verbal highlighting of some details and points that might have otherwise been buried in a dense text such as this one.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Not possible.
Any additional comments?
The author has an obvious bias, which nearly caused me to quit listening about 30 minutes in, but I decided that since it was so obvious, I would be able to mentally filter the facts from the propaganda. Overall it is a very detailed look at an often neglected, but formative portion of American history.
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- Bryan
- 07-28-16
Poor transitions between audio clips
There were some pretty jarring narrator inconsistencies, sometimes mid-sentence. I can understand the need to rerecord certain passages during the course of production, but the blending of one clip with another was clumsy at times. Its hard to tell if it's due to poor recreation of audio capture settings in the studio for the sections that needed rerecording, or simply a separate narrator doing the rerecording altogether.
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- David John
- 08-18-19
well narrated and an excellent overview
the narration is excellent and well paced. the author provides an excellent overview while going into detail on specific characters of interest in later history. in essential book to study that provides an excellent understanding of modern American culture and where its foundations lie.
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- Michael D
- 01-17-19
Enjoyable
I think that although it feels like it should around a lot, this book does an excellent job covering the time period it sets out to describe.
It's amazing the changes that occur during this time. I have not read extensively on this time period so it was great to learn more.
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- Mark
- 04-01-16
<br />Comprehensive in scope
comprehensive in scope and masterful overview of early US history. easy to listen to but with pragmatic insights.
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