One valuable aspect of Grant's work is her ascription of emergent northern nationalism (and of the North as a unified, distinct political section) to the insecurity arising in some of the northern states from industrialization, consequent social upheaval, and increased immigration. This insecurity was heightened, in the minds of local writers and politicians, by the image of an increasingly assertive South… Less valuable would seem to be Grant's attempt to associate such matters with the wider academic debate on nationalism and national identity.… We are often encouraged to believe that irrational and exploitable popular instincts give rise to nationalism. But what seems clear from the evidence… that Grant presents, and from her focus on particular figures such as Horace Mann and Theodore Parker, is the political debt that nationalism owes to an elitist, innovative, progressive, and hubristic mindset… that is the constant companion of ambitious politicians. Bizarrely, in the light of all this, Grant refers to the northeastern Whig/Republican movement as "conservative." Such terminology and paradigms notwithstanding, North Over South provides some stimulating reading.…

Grant argues that Northern regionalism has been understudied precisely because Northerners, and students of nineteenth-century United States history, have equated the North with the Union.… The North's identity evolved in opposition to Southern regionalism. Northerners increasingly saw themselves as the true heirs of the "civic religion" of the American Revolution. Whether romanticizing the Southern gentleman and his plantation setting or demonizing the region as an economic backwater, Northerners constructed an image of the South as a fundamentally different, and even un-American, place.… Grant admits that her study is heavily weighted toward the Northeast and northeastern politicians and intellectuals.… One would have liked to know the impact of their ideas in the Midwest and among non-Whig/Republicans.… Despite these criticisms, this is a well-written and thought-provoking volume. Grant weaves together a number of well-known stories but with a fresh perspective and fascinating observations.