There’s never been one America, Woodard argues in his award-winning book, American Nations, but rather several Americas, each with its own, centuries-old ideals, values, and religious and cultural heritage. Understanding the real map of the continent and its rival cultures is essential to understanding our history, from the divisions of the American Revolution and the Civil War to the “blue county / red county” election cycles, past, present, and future. Woodard shows how early colonial settlement patterns shaped the continent’s cultural, political, and religious landscape, the constitutional structure of the union, and our linguistic, political, and genealogical landscape. And, most importantly, he reveals what we’ve been fighting about all along – a struggle over a free society is best achieved through maximizing individual liberty or the common good – and a path that could create a ruling coalition again to heal our liberal democracy.