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Sounds like Brenda Wineapple may have used Bruce Catton's The Coming Fury as a jumping off point for her brave new book, Ecstatic Nation, in which she examines the tumultuous nation in the throes of disunity, offering up the many disparate forces at work.  There have been many positive reviews, including this one from the New York Times.  Wineapple takes her narrative through the Civil War and Reconstruction, which should make for very interesting reading.

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