Reading list for history of the United States - 1812 - 1861?

by RuinEleint

This section of US history seems to have been skipped over in the list of selected books available in the sidebar. I am curious about a lot of the chief events -

the War of 1812, the Monroe Doctrine, The Missouri Compromise, Andrew Jackson, the Native Americans and the Trail of Tears, Manifest Destiny and expansionism, the first wave of industries - also all the tensions that led up to the Civil War.

I don't live in the US, or even in the West for that matter. I have read some very bulky US history textbooks, (US history is not covered in our college history syllabus so I went hunting by myself) they touched on all these topics, but it felt very superficial.

So I would be really grateful if anyone could recommend some books.

I found the Slavery reading list to be very helpful.

rodmandiplomacy

The Battle Cry of Freedom is a great read and covers most of this era. Some of the early years are in broad strokes, however, as it mostly focuses on the build up to the Civil War and the War itself. There is a lot of good discussion of the development of industry (plus, an interesting comparison of early industrial capitalism to slavery), and the many political compromises leading to the war are covered with some detail. If you aren't interested in the war itself, you could just read up to that point. But you might find some of the later discussion (particularly the economic co-dependence between the Confederacy and the UK/France) interesting, based on your listed interests.

There is an earlier book in the same series, "What Hath God Wrought," which covers specifically the period of 1815-1848, and it won a Pulitzer (as did Battle Cry of Freedom). But I haven't read it, so I don't know how much it focuses on the themes you are interested in.

studakris

For a single volume on Jacksonian America, it’s hard to beat “Liberty and Power” by Harry Watson. It covers not just the politics of Jackson’s administration, but also the political climate which brought him to the White House.