From an award-winning historian, a groundbreaking portrait of
pervasive exploitation and radical resistance in America, told
through the turbulent history of St. Louis
From Lewis and Clark’s 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in
Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter
Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how
imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to
corrupt the nation’s past.
St. Louis was a
staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its
wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery
through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America’s
most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil
War’s first general emancipation, and the nation’s first general
strike — a legacy of resistance that endures.
A blistering history
of a city’s rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America
will forever change how we think about the United States.
