Moments That Made America

If logic means anything, there should be no such nation as the United States of America. Except for a remarkable set of circumstances, some of them bordering on the miraculous, the United States should not exist. The fact that this unique nation is here at all, defies rational explanation. Throughout its entire history, America has survived moments that should have ended its story, events and circumstance that had they not occurred the way they did, the America we know would never have been born. Many are examples of raw, courage and sacrifice: a lost battle that no American defender survived, but that went on to become a rallying cry that, within ten years, led the United States to hold land all the way to the Pacific Ocean; a tough little fort that against all odds survived an horrific bombardment during the War of 1812 and inspired a song that Americans celebrate every day; and the moment when a courageous, American officer disobeyed orders so that he could save the nation he would later betray. From its geological birth during the breakup of the Pangaea super continent, millions of years ago, through America s independence from the British super power, to the approach of the bloody civil war that ended slavery and killed more Americans than all its other wars combined, this first book in the series of three, Moments That Made America: From the Ice Age to the Alamo shines a light on those early defining moments that profoundly shaped the nation and its people - crucial tipping points that worked inexorably to mold and make America. This part of the story culminates in 1850, just as the world reacts to the discovery of gold in California, America's latest success in fulfilling its dream of Manifest Destiny. The next book in the series of three is called, From Civil War to Superpower . The third book will take the American story from that world changing moment at Kitty Hawk through the election of 2016.