Looking for suggestions to pick up on political history, basically the 19th century as the title says. Interested in studying/reading about USA territorial expansion, political development regarding natives, neighbors, the Constitution and internal politics, the development of democracy - or more generally the development of american political thinking. I've read a bit about the Civil War and Reconstruction, some about its origins and I found some books on the war for independence as these are easier to come across outside the US. Trying to expand on the other topics I mentioned, any help appreciated.
I thought "An Empire of Wealth" by John Steele Gordon was excellent. It's about US economic history from colonial times to the earlier internet. It has a big section on 19th century, IIRC.
It was a library book, so I can't look at it to see how much political history there was,
but there was some.
It argued that America made bad calls when it shut down both the First Bank of the United States (Alexander Hamilton's creation) and the subsequent Second Bank of the United States (killed by Pres. Jackson IIRC).
Another I found interesting was "The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire" by Stephen Kinzer.
It's about the fight after Spanish-American War about whether to make the Philippines and other places colonies. Subtitle is misleading - Mark Twain fought against empire, but he wasn't really a big part of book.
