Books and Discussions
Published: 8/29/12
The Mary Lincoln Enigma (2012)
On September 24, 2012, in Chicago, and on October 1 in Springfield, Mary Todd Lincoln will be retried on the charge of insanity. Perhaps she will fare better than at...
Published: 8/24/12
An Interview with Elizabeth Leonard
Our interview with Elizabeth Leonard, the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Professor of History at Colby College and author of Lincoln’s Forgotten Ally: Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt...
Published: 8/22/12
Ruin Nation (2012)
For the last quarter century scholars have worked to recover an essential and missing element of Civil War history: a fuller understanding of the destruction brought by the war. Megan...
Published: 8/17/12
An Interview with Megan Kate Nelson
Our interview with Megan Kate Nelson, Lecturer of History and Literature at Harvard University and author of Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War now out with University...
Published: 8/15/12
Lincoln and the Constitution (2012)
In his contribution to Southern Illinois University Press’s “Concise Lincoln Library” series, historian Brian R. Dirck promises readers a book that is “relatively straightforward and basic: an overview of Lincoln’s...
Published: 8/10/12
An introduction to “Behind the Lines” from your host David Thomson
Host David Thomson provides a brief welcome and introduction to “Behind the Lines,” The Civil War Monitor’s new video interview series with prominent members of the American Civil War...
Published: 8/10/12
An interview with Peter Carmichael
Our interview with Peter Carmichael, the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg College and Director of the Civil War Institute. In this conversation, we discuss...
Published: 8/8/12
Jews and the Civil War (2011)
The Jewish experience during the Civil War has often been ignored or side-stepped by both Civil War historians and historians of American Jewish history. Thankfully, with the publication of Jews...
Published: 8/1/12
Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia (2011)
Richard Newman and James Mueller’s Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia assembles a collection of insightful scholarly essays pivoting Philadelphia as the ideological, legislative, and social activist epicenter of the national abolitionist...
Published: 8/1/12
John Dooley’s Civil War (2011)
For years, historians have found the diary of Second Lieutenant John Edward Dooley, of Company C of the First Virginia Infantry Regiment, a valuable resource. What they did not know,...
Published: 7/25/12
George Henry Thomas (2012)
While historians of the American Civil War have by no means ignored him, they have not lavished as much attention on George Henry Thomas as one might expect, considering his...
Published: 7/18/12
Letters From the Storm (2010)
The 150th anniversary of the Civil War has recently incited a number of historians—academic and popular alike—to revisit the battlefields, the letters, the Blue and the Gray. Letters from the...
Published: 7/18/12
Refugitta of Richmond (2011)
Constance Cary Harrison’s accounts of Civil War Richmond have supplied many a historian with an insider’s view of life in the Confederate capital. Drew Gilpin Faust’s Mothers of Invention: Women...
Published: 7/11/12
The Lincoln Assassination (2010)
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination on Good Friday in 1865 shocked the nation, elevated the fallen President to martyrdom, immediately inspired mythmakers, and intrigued historians for years. Contributors to The Lincoln Assassination:...
Published: 7/11/12
Giant in the Shadows (2012)
Abraham Lincoln’s only surviving son has long been a hard fellow to like. For one thing, he was much more like his presumptuous mother than his endearingly modest and sublimely...
Published: 7/2/12
War Upon the Land (2012)
Lisa Brady could have opened her book with a relevant might-have-been story. Fort Pickens in Pensacola nearly trumped Fort Sumter as the birthplace of the Civil War. Washington simultaneously dispatched...
Published: 6/27/12
John Brown Still Lives! (2011)
The catalysts, conduct, context, and consequences of the Civil War era continue to resonate through American intellectual and popular life. Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, and to a lesser extent,...
Published: 6/20/12
The Revolution of 1861 (2012)
Perhaps the oldest and most out of favor interpretation of the American Civil War was formulated by Karl Marx who saw it as only one aspect of an international revolution...