In this magisterial volume, Sean Wilentz provides a detailed, dramatic, elegantly written, narrative interpretation of American politics from Revolutionary Era to Civil War, history of democracy at its (p. xxi). Accessible to general reader, with brilliant cameos of major and minor figures, it offers a grand, Bancroftian synthesis to a profession in throes of monograph fever. Among many surprises in book is its placement of politics, politicians, and parties at center of American history. Like Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in The Age of Jackson (1945), Wilentz sets rise of democracy in context of conflict between classes. But, he argues, most viewed social and economic developments through a partisan political prism, fighting for (and over) democracy, broadly conceived, at local, state, and national level. Drawing on a tsunami of recent scholarship, demonstrating that lowliest of Americans could-and did-have a significant impact on public policy, Wilentz gives strikes and social movements their innings in The Rise of American Democracy, with vivid descriptions of Workies and Washingtonians (p. 558). But presidents, senators, and congressmen command stage. This methodology-and his assumption that ordinary were deeply engaged in elections and knowledgeable about public policy-will be music to ears of embattled, under-appreciated political historians, even when they take issue-as many will-with his judgments of pivotal moments in antebellum era. Wilentz recognizes that democracy is a capacious and troublesome word (p. xvi). To its champions and its critics in nineteenth century, democracy meant one or some of following: majority rule; minority rights; political participation by the people through voting; equality before law; economic egalitarianism; equal opportunity for individuals to pursue happiness, unencumbered by state. By twenty-first-century standards, Wilentz points out, antebellum America was decidedly undemocratic on many counts: it enslaved most blacks, deprived Indians and free blacks of citizenship, and denied women basic political and civil rights. Wilentz is interested in origins, evolution,