About the Author

Edward L. Ayers, a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, has won the Bancroft and Lincoln Prizes for his innovative histories of Civil War America. He is president emeritus of the University of Richmond, where he is executive director of New American History.

Reviews

Edward Ayers is a rare and distinctively gifted American historian...American Visions does not wallow in our national sins even as it vividly reveals them; it does not celebrate except to help us see how so many different kinds of Americans had their eyes on the anxious future. Read this ye who are weary of bad prose, narrow and politicized history, and see how unpredictable the past can be. Ayers's new book is a literary achievement worthy of that moment when Emerson opened his copy of Leaves of Grass.--David W. Blight, author of Frederick Douglass

Within the pandora's box of antebellum America, Edward L. Ayers finds hope from a dazzling array of eloquent prophets, secular and sacred. In vivid prose and with keen insight, American Visions reveals many alluring futures for our embattled republic.--Alan Taylor, author of American Republics