Civil War Past Readings
2023
- E.L. Doctorow, The March
- James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
- David Dixon, The Lost Gettysburg Address: Charles Anderson’s Civil War
- Brian H. Reid, The Scourge of War: The Life of W.T. Sherman
- Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
- David Blight, Frederick Douglass, Prophet of Freedom
- Bruce Levine, The Fall of the House of Dixie
- Steven Woodworth, The Chattanooga Campaign
- Clint Crowe, Caught in the Maelstrom: The Indian Nations in the Civil War 1861–1865
- Owen Parry, Our Simple Gifts: Civil War Christmas Tales
2022
- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
- Craig L. Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals
- T. H. Williams, Lincoln and His Generals
- Jay Winik, April 1865
- Sven Beckert, Slavery’s Capitalism
- Roger Lowenstein, Ways and Means; Lincoln and His Cabinet and Financing the War
- Personal Memoirs of General U.S. Grant
- Mark Bilelski, A Mortal Blow to the Confederacy: The Fall of New Orleans
- Dred Scott Forum: any sources, diverse points of view
2021
- Jeff Schaara, Smoke at Dawn
- Edward Achorn, Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abe Lincoln
- Joshua Chamberlain, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac, Based on Personal Reminiscences of the 5th Army Corps
- Timothy B. Smith, The Real Horse Soldiers: Benjamin Grierson’s Epic 1863 Civil War Raid Through Mississippi
- Allen Gosnell, Guns on the Western Waters: The Story of Gunboats in the Civil War
- David Herbert Donald, We Are Lincoln Men
- Megan Kate Nelson, The Three Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West
- C. Van Woodward (editor), The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 2nd edition
- Zachary A. Fry, A Republic in the Ranks: Loyalty and Dissent in the Army of the Potomac
2020
- Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings
- Cate Lineberry, Live Free or Die: Robert Smalls Story
- Allen Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglass: The Debates that Defined America
- Robert M. Browning, Lincoln’s Trident: The West Gulf Blockading Squadron
- Brian Lusky, Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of the Free Labor in Civil War America
- Donald Stoker, The Grand Design Strategy and The U.S. Civil War
2019
- Ron Chernow, Grant
- William C. Davis, The Cause Lost
- Richard White, Republic for Which it Stands
- Shelby Foote, Shiloh
- Drew Faust, Republic of Suffering
- Louisa May Alcott, Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War
- Charles Strozier, Lincoln’s Quest for Union: A Psycho Biography
- James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Men Who Fought
- David Blight, Fredrick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
- Joanne B. Freeman, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
- Cory M. Pfarr, Longstreet at Gettysburg: A Critical Assessment
- Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women and Slave Owners in the American South
2018
- Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
- Fred Kaplan, Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer
- John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln
- Harriett Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- Robert P. Broadwater, Battle of Despair: Bentonville and the N.C. Campaign
- Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh, A Savage War: A Military History;
- James Robertson, Standing Like a Stone Wall: The Life of General Thomas Jackson
- Jeff Shaara, The Fateful Lightning: A Novel of the Civil War
- Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln’s Army
2017
- Kenneth S. Greenberg, editor, The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents, second ed.
- Gregory J. Wallance, Two Men Before the Storm: Arba Crane’s Recollection of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court Case That Started the Civil War
- Ethan Greenberg, Dred Scott and the Dangers of a Political Court
- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
- Stephen Vincent Benet, John Brown’s Body
- Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox
2016
- Drew Faust, Mothers of Invention; Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War
- James McPherson, The War that Forged a Nation; Why the Civil War Still Matters
- Eric Foner, Gateway to Freedom: Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
- Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations
- Christopher Dickey, Our Man in Charleston
- Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties
- Gordon Rhea, Carrying the Flag, The Story of Private Charles Whilden, the Confederacy’s Most Unlikely Hero
- Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton
- Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
- Paul Alan Cimbala, Veterans North and South: The Transition from Soldier to Civilian after the American Civil War
- James M. McPherson, Antietam: The Battle That Changed the Course of the Civil War
2015
- Karen Abbott, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy
- Jay Wernick, April, 1865
- James McPherson, Embattled Rebel, Jefferson Davis as Commander in Chief
- James Oakes, Freedom National: Destruction of Slavery in the United States
- Thomas Fleming, A Disease in the Public Mind
- Joan Cashin, The War Was You and Me
- Jim Downs, Sick From Freedom
- Craig Symonds, Lincoln and His Admirals
- T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals
- Jane Singer and John Stewart, Lincoln’s Secret Spy: The Civil War Case That Changed The Future Of Espionage
- Edward Steers and Harold Holzer, eds., The Lincoln Assassination Conspirators (“Washington’s 1865 Guantanamo”)
2014
- James Conroy, Our One Common Country: Abraham Lincoln and the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865
- Jack Hurst, Born to Battle: Grant and Forrest: Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga
- Bruce Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South
- Allen C. Guelzo, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion
- Brian R. Dirck, Lincoln & Davis, Imagining America 1809-1865
- Jeffrey Wert, General James Longstreet: The Confederacy’s Most Controversial Soldier, A Biography
- Peter Carlson, Junius and Albert’s Adventures in the Confederacy: A Civil War Odyssey
- Charles Sanders, While in the Hands of the Enemy
2013
- Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land With Blood: Biography of John Brown
- Lea VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott, A Life on Slavery’s Frontier
- Drew G. Faust, This Republic of Suffering
- Richard N. Current, Lincoln and the First Shot
- Benson Bobrick, Master of War: The Life of George H. Thomas
- Shelby Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1 (Fort Sumter to Perryville)
- John J. Hennessy, Return to Bull Run
- Adam Goodheart, 1861
- Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire
- Ulysses S. Grant, Memoirs
- Kenneth S. Greenberg, Nat Turner: A Slave Rebellion in History and Memory
2012
- Gary Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg
- Jean Baker, Mary Todd
- Catherine Clinton, Mrs. Lincoln: A Life
- John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code
- David A. Nichols, Lincoln and the Indians
- John S. Mosby, Memoirs of John S. Mosby
- Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Bayonet! Forward! My Civil War