""An extraordinary book. ""--Gordon S. Wood, Brown University Having won independence from England, America faced a new question: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not? "E Pluribus Unum" is a spirited look at how that question came to be answered. That the American people introduced a governmental system adequate to check the very forces unleashed by the Revolution--this, writes Professor McDonald, "was the miracle of the age... The French, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, all the planet's peoples in their turn, would become so unrestrained as to lose contact with sanity. The Americans might have suffered a similar history had they followed the lead of those who, in 1787 and 1788, spoke in the name ... of popular 'rights. ' But there were giants on the earth in those days, and they spoke in the name of the nation... "Forrest McDonald is Professor of History at the University of Alabama.