
Books and Discussions


Published: 5/22/13
Andrew Johnson’s Civil War (2011)
Few Presidents have witnessed as drastic a historiographical shift as Andrew Johnson. Hailed in the early twentieth-century as both a defender of the Constitution and a steadfast barrier to Congressional...
Published: 5/22/13
Mending Broken Soldiers (2012)
The American Civil War acted like a battering ram on the human body. Debilitating diseases incapacitated soldiers for weeks and months. Gleaming bayonet blades, soaring shrapnel and shells and leaden...
Published: 5/17/13
An Interview with William A. Link
Our conversation with William A. Link, author of Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War’s Aftermath published by the University of North Carolina...
Published: 5/15/13
Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013)
When I received my review copy of Allen C. Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, I asked myself, “does the world need another one-volume history of Gettysburg?” Recent fine monographs on...
Published: 5/10/13
An Interview with CWI’s Peter Carmichael
Our conversation with Peter Carmichael, the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. Pete offers his thoughts on the...
Published: 5/8/13
Becoming Confederates (2013)
Much of the work of the historian comes down to explaining what drove historic actors to behave as they did. For Civil War historians the questions are unusually thorny, and...
Published: 5/3/13
An Interview with Wayne E. Motts
Our conversation with Wayne E. Motts, the CEO of the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In this conversation, Motts discusses the current and future exhibits of the museum...
Published: 5/1/13
Freedom National (2012)
James Oakes has received high praise for his Lincoln Prize winning Freedom National: the Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. When an eminent nineteenth-century historian tackles this topic...
Published: 4/26/13
An Interview with Jeff Rosenheim
Our conversation with Jeff Rosenheim, the Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In this interview, Jeff discusses...
Published: 4/24/13
Diverging Loyalties (2011)
Bruce T. Gourley’s Diverging Loyalties: Baptists in Middle Georgia During the Civil War is an engrossing, enlightening exploration of our nation’s greatest trauma, as seen through the eyes of a unique...
Published: 4/19/13
An Interview with Marion Moser Jones
Our interview with Marian Moser Jones, an assistant professor of family science at University of Maryland’s School of Public Health and the author of The American Red Cross: From...
Published: 4/17/13
A Self-Evident Lie (2013)
Ironically, the falsehood discussed in Jeremy J. Tewell’s important study, A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom would not be considered a lie today. His title refers...
Published: 4/10/13
Guerrillas in Civil War Missouri (2012)
The past several years have seen a great increase in interest in the history of the guerrilla conflict by both scholars and amateur historians alike. It seems that wherever one...
Published: 4/3/13
The CSS Virginia (2012)
As one of the main participants in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the CSS Virginia has received considerable attention from historians. But these works tend to focus on the ship’s novel...
Published: 3/27/13
Freedom Papers (2012)
In September 1899, Edouard Tinchant (1841-1915), a man of Haitian descent with an unusual background, including service in Company C 6th Louisiana Volunteers, during the Civil War, wrote to Maximo...
Published: 3/20/13
John Brown’s Spy (2012)
In the past 20 years no less than three significant monographs, each written by a capable scholar, have documented and analyzed the life of abolitionist and insurrectionist John Brown or...
Published: 3/20/13
Abraham Lincoln and White America (2012)
Countless books and articles about Abraham Lincoln’s views and policies on slavery and race have appeared over the years, but Brian Dirck is the first historian to explore Lincoln’s identity...
Published: 3/15/13
An Interview with Ron Coddington
Our conversation with Ron Coddington, an assistant managing editor with the Chronicle of Higher Education and author of African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album, published by...