The Bookshelf

"Incidents in the Life of Cecilia Lawton" brims with nostalgia for the antebellum South, teems with malice for Sherman, and articulate the fear and loath white Southerners harbored for freepeople...

Katherine Bentley Jeffrey's "First Chaplain of the Confederacy" reminds us of the nuanced role Catholics played in the Confederate and Reconstruction South.

Michael Smith's "In The Shadow of Gold" is a historical novel for our own challenging times.

Deborah Willis' "The Black Civil War Soldier" is a reminder of one of the most compelling stories of the conflict: the efforts of more than 180,000 African American soldiers to fight for freedom.

Bruce Levine's "Thaddeus Stevens" is the first major biography of The Great Commoner in nearly a quarter century.

"On Rising Ground" is a well-researched, well-written, and always empathetic account of a very ordinary soldier and his family.

An effective antidote to the Lost Cause, Ty Seidule's "Robert E. Lee and Me" deserves both a wide readership and a place on undergraduate syllabi.

In "Ambitious Honor," James Mueller has managed to find something new to say about George Armstrong Custer.

With "Bonds of Salvation," Ben Wright has convincingly demonstrated the importance of religious denominations to the lives of early Americans and the nation as a whole.

Benjamin T. Arrington's "The Last Lincoln Republican" is a superb new study of Garfield's dark horse race for the Executive Mansion.