“History in Davis’s hands is loud, coarse, painful, funny, irreverent—and memorable.”

— San Francisco Chronicle

Following on his New York Times bestsellers America’s Hidden History and Don’t Know Much About History, Ken Davis explores the next chapter in the country’s hidden history: the gritty first half of the 19th century, among the most tumultuous in the nation’s short life.

These are the stories often left out of the textbooks—the moments that truly defined a rising nation.

• Fort Mims Massacre: The bloody frontier battle that shocked the nation, sparked a brutal war against the Creek Nation, and launched the military career of Andrew Jackson.
• A Daring Slave Rebellion: The forgotten story of Madison Washington, an escaped slave who led a successful revolt aboard the brig Creole, seizing freedom for more than 100 people and creating an international crisis.
• The Second Seminole War: A decades-long guerilla war in the swamps of Florida where runaway slaves and Seminole warriors joined forces to fight the U.S. Army to a bloody stalemate.
• Anti-Immigrant Riots: The shocking sectarian violence of the Philadelphia 'Bible Riots,' a forgotten chapter of American intolerance where Nativist mobs burned churches in the City of Brotherly Love.
• Manifest Destiny's Power Couple: The intertwined journey of explorer John C. Frémont and his brilliant wife Jessie Benton Frémont, whose ambition and adventures helped push America's borders to the Pacific.

"Davis is a fine writer who uses a fast-moving narrative to tell these stories well... This is an informative and enjoyable work."