The extraordinary story of the United States, a nation that contains multitudes

When Britain's thirteen American colonies declared their independence on 4 July 1776, the United States of America was born. But it was hardly united.

In this superbly written book, Don Watson traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out throughits history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

This is a story full of character and humour, told with great learning and insight – a perfect introduction to America, past and present.

'These were indeed strange times. Yet the forces at work in them were not new. Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.'—Don Watson, The Shortest History of the United States of America

“In The Shortest History of the United States, Don Watson has created a must-read: an elegant portrait of the beauty and brutality, generosity and selfishness, greatness and exploitation, nobility and vindictiveness that is America – a tricolour chameleon tattooed onto the world’s consciousness.” —Allan Behm, The Australia Institute, Canberra

Praise for Don Watson
'Watson is an original, with an authentic, prophetic voice.' —John Hirst 
'As a star of the epigram he's right up there with Tocqueville, and as a story-teller he loses nothing to Theroux' —Thomas Keneally 
'One of our best historians ...' —Geraldine Doogue 

Praise for American Journeys
'The best book by an outsider about America since – forever' —David Sedaris
'Dazzlingly eloquent and perceptive ... ' —Thomas Keneally