*How America Was Founded* tells the sweeping story of how the United States emerged from a continent already inhabited by powerful Indigenous nations and developed into one of the most influential countries in modern history.

Beginning long before European colonisation, the book explores Indigenous societies, European settlement, the thirteen colonies and the growing tensions with Britain that ultimately erupted into the American Revolution. It follows the struggle for independence, the creation of the Constitution and the difficult construction of a new republic.

The story then moves through territorial expansion, slavery, political division and the devastating American Civil War before examining Reconstruction, industrialisation, immigration, global wars, civil rights and the transformations that shaped modern America.

Rather than treating America's founding as a single moment in 1776, Murat Smith examines the generations of conflict, ideas, ambition and human experience that created the United States—and the contradictions that have accompanied the nation throughout its history.

An expansive illustrated history for readers who want to understand not only how America was founded, but how it became the country it is today.