David W. Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory and American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, discusses the Civil War Sesquicentennial.
- American Oracle
- The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era
- David Blight takes his readers back to the Civil War’s centennial celebration to determine how Americans made sense of the suffering, loss, and liberation a century earlier. He shows how four of America’s most incisive writers—Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson, and James Baldwin—explored the gulf between remembrance and reality.
- The Union War
- “[I]n The Union War, Gallagher is back to take issue with what has become the new conventional wisdom, that the North fought the war in order to achieve the emancipation of the slaves. While welcoming the post–civil-rights-era emphasis on ‘slavery, emancipation, and the actions of black people, unfairly marginalized for decades in writings about the conflict,’ Gallagher makes a very strong case—in my view a virtually irrefutable one—that the overriding motive in the North was preservation of the Union… Gallagher, who holds a distinguished professorship in history at the University of Virginia, is far more interested in pursuing historical truth than in massaging whatever praiseworthy sentiments he may harbor on race, gender, class or anything else. He knows that for the historian the central obligation is to understand and interpret the past, not to judge it. This is what he has done, to exemplary effect, in The Union War.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
- Confederate Reckoning
- Power and Politics in the Civil War South
- “Perhaps the highest praise one can offer McCurry’s work is to say that once we look through her eyes, it will become almost impossible to believe that we ever saw or thought otherwise… At the outset of the book, McCurry insists that she is not going to ask or answer the timeworn question of why the South lost the Civil War. Yet in her vivid and richly textured portrait of what she calls the Confederacy’s ‘undoing,’ she has in fact accomplished exactly that. And in doing so McCurry has written also a paean to social justice and to democracy, commitments and aspirations we would be well-served to make the heart of our Sesquicentennial commemorations.”
—Drew Gilpin Faust, The New Republic
- Race and Reunion
- The Civil War in American Memory
- “The immensely important but neglected story of ‘the Civil War in American memory’ is the subject of David W. Blight’s Race and Reunion… [This book] will strongly influence the writing of post-Civil War history for decades to come. Indeed, Race and Reunion is surely one of the four or five most important works in American history written in the past decade.”
—David Brion Davis, The New York Review of Books
- Daughters of the Union
- Northern Women Fight the Civil War
- “We have all eagerly awaited this indispensable book. Nina Silber’s engaging and definitive study presents a new side of the Civil War experience in the North and a new dimension of the history of American women.”
—Drew Gilpin Faust, author of Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
- Near Andersonville
- Winslow Homer’s Civil War
- “A magnificently focused meditation that arrives at a completely fresh perspective on the painting and its precise Civil War background. Readers will see Homer’s Near Andersonville anew after engaging with Peter Wood’s literally eye-opening work.”
—Werner Sollors, Harvard University
“Wood has unraveled the deep and subtle meanings expressed in Near Andersonville. The ambiguities of slavery and freedom, of the past and future framed by war, are brilliantly analyzed in this powerful and compelling book.”
—James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom
- Stealing Lincoln’s Body
- “The plot that gives Stealing Lincoln’s Body its title unfolds with equal doses of Martin Scorsese and the Three Stooges, the fecklessness of the robbers nearly trumped by that of the cops, on election night 1876, more than a decade after the President’s assassination… It is a marvelous look into Gilded Age America and the wellsprings of many of our modern vexations.”
—Thomas Lynch, The Times
”Propelled by its true-crime format, Craughwell’s history of Lincoln’s several reburials and their strange-but-true details is irresistible.”
—Gilbert Taylor, Booklist
- The Political Worlds of Slavery and Freedom
- “Hahn has emerged as the pre-eminent historian of black politics in the apparently lost decades between the end of the Civil War and the stirrings of the modern civil rights movement… Hahn wants us to be bolder in exploring the hidden corners of black history, to set aside the integrationist narrative in search of the totality of black experience.”
—Nicholas Guyatt, The Nation
“No one has explained the story of emancipation, and its grassroots politics, as well as Steven Hahn.”
—David Blight, author of Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American History
- Becoming Free in the Cotton South
- “The seismic shifts set in motion by the emancipation reached into every corner of the American South. In exploring one small corner, Becoming Free reveals how the earthquake that accompanied freedom’s arrival shifted gender relations in the household, field, and hustings and in the process changed much more. Susan O’Donovan’s small story is a big story, an original one, and an important one.”
—Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone
- The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction
- “Neely tackles a fascinating and important topic: were terror and brutality a key part of the Civil War? He makes a compelling case that the combat was more controlled than we now often accept. His account is original—in some cases clearly pathbreaking—and his tone passionate and gripping. This is a major contribution that will capture a wide readership.”
—Ari Kelman, author of A River and Its City
“A seminal work on a big issue, The Civil War and the Limits of Destruction should stir up much productive discussion.”
—John Cimprich, Civil War Book Review
- Justice in Blue and Gray
- A Legal History of the Civil War
- “An essential book for understanding America’s bifurcated legal system in wartime—the criminal courts under an established jurisprudence and military commissions pursuant to the law of war. Indeed, many issues Neff examines—sovereignty, detention, civil liberties in wartime—are relevant today. This is an original and vital contribution to history and constitutional law that is also accessible to general readers. I unequivocally recommend it.”
—Frank J. Williams, former Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and founding chair of the Lincoln Forum
- John Brown’s Trial
- “John Brown’s Trial is an important book on an important subject. Brian McGinty’s impressive research sheds much new light on a crucial–and previously underappreciated–event in American legal history.”
—Steven Lubet, author of Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp
“McGinty casts the spotlight on one of the great courtroom dramas of the nineteenth century, the trial of John Brown. This is Brown as we have never seen him before—not the martyr, nor the fanatic, but a man in complete control, who manages to transform his treason trial into a searing indictment of slavery in America.”
—Thomas J. Craughwell, author of Stealing Lincoln’s Body
- Lincoln and the Court
- “[A] fascinating book… The issue of presidential power in wartime is as fresh as today’s headlines.”
—Charles Lane, The Washington Post
“It’s not easy to find Lincoln territory where good, open grazing land remains, but McGinty has found it. Combining expertise as an attorney and historian with a style that welcomes readers, he gives us Lincoln the lawyer-president who worked with a Supreme Court to which he ultimately appointed five members. The Civil War brought forth numerous legal conflicts, and McGinty shows that the personalities and issues involved were as vital and fascinating as those we are more familiar with on the military side.”
—Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal
- First Lady of the Confederacy
- Varina Davis’s Civil War
- “[T]he case of Varina Davis takes on special meaning because she was the most prominent Southern woman of her time… Cashin’s book leaves no doubt that she was in fact a considerably more interesting person than her husband, and a better one as well.”
—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
“Cashin is a strong, clear writer and situates her complex subject in larger academic debates, for example, about gender in the 19th century, without getting bogged down in academese. All in all, this is a terrifically winning portrait of a fascinating woman.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
- Big Enough to Be Inconsistent
- Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race
- “With graceful and efficient expertise, Fredrickson deconstructs our rigid castings of Lincoln as either savior or racist. This exceptional book has that rare ability to make the less informed feel wise and the wise feel all the more discerning and learned.”
—Margaret Heilbrun, Library Journal (starred review)
“For more than thirty years George Frederickson was a leading historian of race relations and racial ideologies in the United States and other multiracial societies… Big Enough to Be Inconsistent focuses more on Lincoln’s own racial attitudes than on his policies toward slavery.”
—James M. McPherson, The New York Review of Books
- The Union Divided
- Party Conflict in the Civil War North
- “Though his book is designed to be "tentative and suggestive"–in other words, to replace the accepted wisdom with thoughtful queries and to provoke debate–Neely provides a bold and informed reappraisal of Northern party and factional discord and its impact on the conduct and outcome of the Civil War.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is a bold and provocative book that reveals how fragile the American democratic system really was when confronted with the strains of civil war.”
—William Gienapp, Harvard University
- Commander of All Lincoln’s Armies
- A Life of General Henry W. Halleck
- “In this first full-scale biography of Henry W. Halleck, John Marszalek offers a balanced appraisal of that controversial general’s strengths and weaknesses. An excellent administrator, Halleck could not make command decisions. A disappointment as general in chief, he nevertheless helped organize Union victory in the Civil War. This important book provides new insights on the Union command structure.”
—James M. McPherson, author of Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
- The Black Hearts of Men
- Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race
- “The Black Hearts of Men is a story of politics, religion, sin, guilt, passion, murder and expiation. It begins in innocence and good intentions and ends in bloodshed and madness… Stauffer knows what he has with this remarkable story. He deftly outlines the thinking of his subjects, and is especially good at showing the links between their religious beliefs and their politics.”
—Barry Gewen, The New York Times Book Review
- Lincoln’s Last Months
- “Though the reader knows exactly what will happen to Abraham Lincoln on Good Friday, 1865, William C. Harris brings nail-biting tension, along with heartbreaking pathos and insightful historical analysis, to the story of Lincoln’s final days. This is masterful story-telling and gripping history.”
—Harold Holzer, Co-chairman, United States Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
- The Confederate War
- “[Gallagher’s] perceptive and engaging book maintains that historians have got off track in recent years by attributing Confederate defeat to weakness on the home front rather than to performance on the battlefield… Gallagher addresses the right issues, asks probing questions and suggests intriguing alternatives.”
—Daniel E. Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review
“Gallagher’s effort will have serious students rejoicing in its persuasive argumentation for believing that battles and armies who indeed have some bearing on the outcomes of war.”
—Booklist
