The book reads very well and is quite entertaining, but there a good degree of generalizations and some outright errors. For instance, King Charles I of England who was executed by the Puritans was not Roman Catholic but Anglican. Nevertheless if you appreciate the distinctions in the various US regions and wonder how they became the way they are this a highly readable introduction to the subject.At first I thought the thesis implausible regarding the eleven competing "nations" but Woodard's easy to read book is based on serious scholarly research of ethnoregional histories of the US like "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. The basic premise is that the Yankee culture of New England with its Puritan roots spread to the northern Midwest and California by Yankee cultural "missionaries". The Midlands of Pennsylvania were dominated by English Quakers and German farmers who tend to be orderly, tolerant and pacifist; they are/were a blend of different nationalities and many different Protestant denominations. NYC became an isolated unit of commerce: multi-ethnic, extremely tolerant, not so religious, very materialistic but highly influential. English aristocrats who were related to the Cavaliers who fought against the Puritans in England founded the Tidewater culture of Virginia and Maryland and were unlikely bed fellows with their Yankee neighbors for the fight for "independence" from England. Most of the Tidewater gentry preferred to remain with England and considered themselves as aristocratic as anyone in their native England. Slave Lords of Barbados founded South Carolina and the Deep South culture while the belligerent Ulster Scots (Scotch Irish) settled Greater Appalachia, considering a neighbor 5 miles away too close. The descendants of the Ulster Scots were a raucous bunch that enjoyed leisure, whisky, Indian hunting and would fight anyone, anywhere at a moment's notice. To this day they are the first to enlist if they sense US "honor" slighted and Andrew Jackson, who initiated the Trail of Tears was their first President. The freedom-loving Ulster Scots surprisingly hated the Deep South slave lords more than they despised the intrusive Yankee cultural imperialists. In fact, most Scotch Irish Appalachian men fought for the Union or remained neutral, though their lands are in the South and they are the fount of the Country Music scene in Nashville. Why fight for the ilk that had oppressed you in Scotland and Ireland? The Utopian Yankees, the pacifist Midlanders, the gun touting Scotch Irish and the Slave Lords of the Deep South were all able to penetrate and colonize the interior of the continent and maintain or even expand their political power nationwide while NYC and the Virginia aristocrats remained landlocked - both regionally and politically. So much so that US history has been a political battle between the powerful Deep South and the moral crusading Yankees that replaced Puritanism with liberal values. Very often the Midlanders with their massive German population have ended up the "king makers," determining who becomes president of the USA and it was not until the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ that Greater Appalachia finally formed the "Dixie Coalition" with the Deep South. The map on the cover jacket breaks up the 11 regional "nations" and is not unlike a reflection of how the different areas vote.