The authors integrate the cultural, social, economic, and military history of the state into a highly readable, interesting story of antebellum Kentucky.
~Marion Lucas, author of A History of Blacks in Kentucky: From Slavery to Segregation
Wide-ranging in its coverage, strong in its scholarship, and wise in its conclusions, Kentucky Rising starts with Henry Clay and ends with Abraham Lincoln, two well-known figures in the state's story. But it is what is between that makes the book so important. The authors illuminate both the known and the lesser known parts of the story. As a results, readers find in these pages new and interesting information about art and architecture, culture and cholera, social life and steamboats, politics and the press, slavery and antislavery, war and peace, Union and Confederate, and so much more. This is a signal achievement.
~James C. Klotter, State Historian of Kentucky
A readable survey of the commonwealth's role in the formative years of the American Republic
~H-Net Review
With clear purpose and language, thorough gathering of facts, breadth of coverage, and effective interpretations and summations, Ramage and Watkins have made an important addition to the published material on our state's heritage and place in history.
~Kentucky Libraries
Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, Ramage and Watkins demonstrate that the eyes of the nation often focused on Kentucky, which was perceived as a leader among the states before the Civil War.
~Civil War
Well researched, [Ramage and Watkins] explore the crucial but overlooked period from 1800 to 1865 when Kentucky ascended to become a leader in politics, science and education.
~Norhtern Kentucky Heritage
James Ramage and Andrea Watkins demonstrate a positive aura surrounding frontier Kentucky.
~Kentucky Monthly
This wide-ranging survey of Kentucky's history through 1865 has two advantages for the reader. The book is organized by topic, and it covers a period of our history when Kentucky was a leader in education, politics, and valor.
~Arts-Louisville
Revealing deep research into and knowledge of early Kentucky and frontier history, this book would work well in a college survey or for general readers interested in this period.
~Choice Magazine
An outstanding, beautifully written book that centers on Kentucky's contributions to the nation during the antebellum era.
~Bowling Green Daily News
Ramage and Watkins make a convincing case that Kentucky, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was a politically, economically, and intellectually dynamic place that was viewed by many contemporaries as one of the leading states of the nation
~Daniel P. Murphy, Journal of American Culture
James Ramage and Andrea Watkins's Kentucky Rising is the best single overview of antebellum Kentucky ever written. Skillfully weaving political history with the social and cultural aspects of early Kentucky, Ramage and Watkins have produced a lasting and excellent framework that future historians will learn from, expand upon, and contend with.
~Indiana Magazine of History
Ramage and Watkins provide an extremely valuable survey of the state's development in the decades leading up to the war...No short summary can do justice to this very valuable work. Read it!
~Blue & Gray Magazine
