Wide Awake Audiobook By Jon Grinspan cover art

Wide Awake

The Forgotten Force That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War

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Wide Awake

By: Jon Grinspan
Narrated by: Sean Pratt
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Bloomsbury presents Wide Awake by Jon Grinspan, read by Sean Pratt.

“Excellent."—Wall Street Journal

A propulsive account of our history’s most surprising, most consequential political club: the Wide Awake anti-slavery youth movement that marched America from the 1860 election to civil war.

At the start of the 1860 presidential campaign, a handful of fired-up young Northerners appeared as bodyguards to defend anti-slavery stump speakers from frequent attacks. The group called themselves the Wide Awakes. Soon, hundreds of thousands of young White and Black men, and a number of women, were organizing boisterous, uniformed, torch-bearing brigades of their own. These Wide Awakes—mostly working-class Americans in their twenties—became one of the largest, most spectacular, and most influential political movements in our history. To some, it demonstrated the power of a rising majority to push back against slavery. To others, it looked like a paramilitary force training to invade the South. Within a year, the nation would be at war with itself, and many on both sides would point to the Wide Awakes as the mechanism that got them there.

In this gripping narrative, Smithsonian historian Jon Grinspan examines how exactly our nation crossed the threshold from a political campaign into a war. Perfect for readers of Lincoln on the Verge and TheField of Blood, Wide Awake bears witness to the power of protest, the fight for majority rule, and the defense of free speech. At its core, Wide Awake illuminates a question American democracy keeps posing, about the precarious relationship between violent speech and violent actions. American Civil War Military Wars & Conflicts War Abraham Lincoln Civil War Suffrage
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Critic reviews

Illuminating . . . Torch-bearing marchers with an agenda summon up uncomfortable memories of Berlin in 1933 and Charlottesville in 2017. But Mr. Grinspan’s excellent book makes us realize that public zeal in support of a worthy cause can have positive results—in this case, the election of America’s greatest president.
A well told, timely, and important story about common people who exerted an unexpected influence on the events that led to the defining moment in United States history. This is a book that every Civil War enthusiast should read.
As a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Grinspan has an expert’s eye and ear for how the telling detail — a worn-out cloak, a song lyric — can tell a larger story . . . Wide Awake shows us how five young men stitching matching capes on a long-ago February night mattered then and matters now.
[Grinspan] accomplishes the exciting feat of illuminating an under-explored facet of nineteenth-century American history in this well-written, well-organized, and thoroughly researched account of the Wide Awake movement . . . [he] insightfully shows how their use of symbols, ideology, and activism has influenced American politics to the present day.
A timely contribution to our understanding of populist politics and the transformation of sectional political rhetoric into open violence . . . Grinspan is a masterful writer whose prose is absorbing.
A searching exploration of America’s evolving political culture . . . [Grinspan] conveys all this in elegant, cinematic prose that captures the sometimes thrilling, sometimes menacing atmospherics of the [Wide Awake] movement. The result is an insightful and moving analysis of how America descended into civil war.
Grinspan writes that most agreed that the system of slavery involved the silencing of opposition by violence—and in that sense, his book is timely indeed . . . A welcome study of an overlooked aspect of the Civil War and the events leading up to it.
Jon Grinspan’s richly detailed book more than earns its place on the teeming shelf of Civil War histories. This timely story of the half-forgotten Wide Awakes bears a powerful message for our frustrating political moment: the force that binds a coalition together lives as much in the feeling body as it does in the thinking head.
Grinspan’s brilliant account of the Wide Awakes bristles with contemporary relevance. The dramatic story of this forgotten movement illuminates the militarism and violence, the passion and paranoia, in our politics. Here, brought to vivid life, is the pageant of American democracy in all its captivating complexity.
All stars
Most relevant
This book reminds us of the importance of people in the streets. It gives us a sense of what will take to stop fascism in our time.

A Movement Time Forgot

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For many, the story of the Wide Awakes, their campaign of 1860 and t
all that followed after will be like a missing puzzle piece that finally completes the overall tableau of the American Civil War

Revelatory and bound to shift the paradigm

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This is a deeply-researched book about the Wide-Awakes, who were so prominent in the year 1860. I've read about them numerous times in other books about that year's election, about Lincoln, and about the lead up to the Civil War, but until this book there hasn't been anything in depth about them.

But they were famous and the topic of nationwide conversation during that election year. This book shows the good and some bad about a group of mostly working class young progressive men who helped get Lincoln elected while horrifying Southerners. I learned a lot, including that in 1860, almost nobody -- even ardent abolitionists --believed slavery would be eradicated in their lifetimes. That the Wide-Awakes were even a little responsible for that belief being wrong gives them an honorable place in history. Well-narrated by Sean Pratt.

Interesting account

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A compelling tale of a forgotten movement that shaped American politics then and now. I picked this up after reading Grispan's Age of Acrimony and liked this one better. It dispells the surface level truths we're told of the Civil War to tell of a more granular uprising. It also brings understanding to what made the MAGA movement work and its potential influence today.
Fantastic narration. The narrator captures the tones and emotions that colored the quotes and sentiments of people at the time. Providing story to historical accounts.
The book contributed greatly to my knowledge of American history, political violence, and the forces that shaped the Civil War. Definitely recommend.

Well told story of a forgotten movement

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The gripping story of a grass-roots movement that played a critical role in electing Lincoln and then disappeared from modern history books. I couldn’t put it down! The relevance to our own troubled times is astounding. Well-written and well-read—a great listen!

Amazing we never learned this in school!

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