Overview

The National Road is the first narrative history of the federal project--begun decades before the nation itself was born and ranging through the 1830s--that connected the United States across the Alleghenies and into the western frontier. Starting with a young Washington's dream of uniting the Potomac and Ohio Rivers, historian Brady J. Crytzer recounts the political debates, personal rivalries, and engineering marvels that culminated in an artery that brought settlers, ideas, and commerce into the American interior. Washington scouted the western frontier as a surveyor and championed a route to unify the fledgling republic. Albert Gallatin, America's longest tenured secretary of the treasury, battled political opposition to fund the project. Thomas Jefferson, torn between his agrarian ideals and the demands of a growing republic, ultimately championed the road as a means of securing western lands and extending democratic reach. And Henry Clay harnessed the road to advance his bold American System. Filled with visionaries, rebels, and everyday families seeking the American dream, and featuring congressional showdowns and backroom deals to mountain crossings and boisterous frontier towns, The National Road reveals the triumphs and tragedies of an infrastructure saga that helped define the United States.

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Brady J. Crytzer is a historian of the American frontier and the award-winning author of The Whiskey Rebellion, Guyasuta and the Fall of Indian America, and Hessians: Mercenaries, Rebels, and the War for British North America. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Journal of the American Revolution. He is the host of the acclaimed podcast Dispatches, and he appears regularly on the cable series Into the Wild Frontier and Outlaws and Lawmen, as well as Fox Nation's new series, Blood On The Bridge: The Battle of Lexington & Concord. He teaches at Robert Morris University. Basil Sands is an award-winning narrator working between the Chugach Mountains and Pacific Ocean in Anchorage, Alaska. He has narrated for many bestselling authors and helped many less-known authors climb that ladder. He's a former US Marine who for several years in the '90s ran the dining hall at the NSA, a.k.a. ""Chef to the Spies."" He's been a logger, carpenter, scoutmaster, wilderness rescue medic, senior IT guy, and novelist, and was a minister for over twenty-five years. He rents space in his basement to four Leprechaun brothers; they make the best lager.

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