Joel Richard Paul is a professor of constitutional and international law at the University of California Hastings Law School in San Francisco. He is the author of Without Precedent- Chief Justice Marshall and His Times, and Unlikely Allies- How a Merchant, a Playwright and a Spy Saved the American Revolution. He lives in Northern California.
Praise for Indivisible:
“The Webster who emerges from Mr. Paul’s pages is a fascinating
figure…Webster’s career also serves as the armature for Mr. Paul’s
analysis of the forces that shaped American nationalism during the
first half of the 19th century.” —The Wall Street Journal
“A majestic history….[Paul] fashions an impressively
multilayered narrative….. An ambitious work that wonderfully
delineates the formative years of the nation’s character.” —Kirkus
(STARRED)
“Paul examines…the role that 19th-century lawyer, congressman, and
orator Daniel Webster played in promoting the idea of American
nationalism based on the Constitution.…Full of fascinating
digressions and astute analysis, this is a rewarding look at one of
America’s most enduring fault lines.” —Publishers Weekly
“With a lucidity to match his subject's famed eloquence of the
spoken word, Joel Richard Paul shows how Daniel Webster's
oratorical brilliance helped define the meaning of Union in the
antebellum era.” ―James M. McPherson, author of the Pulitzer
Prize−winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
“Indivisible tells the remarkable story of Daniel Webster, a
towering American whose hypnotic oratory in the nineteenth century
helped define the character of the American nation. When Webster
died, Ralph Waldo Emerson said that ’the world had lost the
completest man.’ This, then, is the completest book on the
completest man. A stirring and monumental achievement.”
―Congressman Jamie Raskin, author of Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth,
and the Trials of American Democracy
“This is an impressively researched book that is also a fine
example of narrative analysis and old-fashioned storytelling.
Indivisible recounts how Webster made nationalism a civic religion
in a country with deep political division over questions of racial
equality. This is a must read as issues of race and national
identity continue to vex the country.” ―Anita Hill, Brandeis
University professor of social policy, law, and women's studies and
author of Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender
Violence
“Joel Richard Paul's richly contextual biography of Daniel Webster
vividly captures the flawed, brilliant leader who forged American
institutions and identity. From incandescent oratory to morally
muddled compromises, Webster did everything he could to battle
extremism and division, a struggle all too resonant in our own
polarized times.” —T.J. Stiles, author of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning The First Tycoon and Custer's Trials
“In this compelling narrative, Joel Richard Paul portrays the
tragedy of the man whose devotion to the Union could not overcome
the strident demands of slaveholders and the populist racism of
whites in the North and South. This insightful account gives
Webster his due in a cautionary tale for a nation once again
struggling to sustain constitutional liberty for all its people.”
―Robert A. Gross, Bancroft Prize−winning author of The Minutemen
and Their World and The Transcendentalists and Their World
“Joel Richard Paul’s wonderful book blends episodes from the life
of Daniel Webster, the silver-tongued orator who defined American
national identity with kaleidoscopic coverage of other leaders and
the events that nearly tore the country apart during the first half
of the nineteenth century.” ―William Taubman, Pulitzer
Prize−winning author of Khrushchev: The Man and His Era and
Gorbachev: His Life and Times
“Joel Richard Paul has given us an elegant, highly readable
biography of Daniel Webster.” ―James Kirby Martin, Professor of
History Emeritus, University of Houston, and author of Surviving
Dresden
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