New to the Civil War Memory Library

I haven’t updated my list of new acquisitions in quite some time. Most of what I am reading is in connection to my current book project on the life of John Christopher Winsmith of Spartanburg, South Carolina, who served as a captain in the Confederate army and later supported the Republican Party during Reconstruction.

William L. Barney, Rebels in the Making: The Secession Crisis and the Birth of the Confederacy (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life (Verso, 2014).

Gary W. Gallagher, The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis (Louisiana State University Press, 2020).

W. Todd Groce, Mountain Rebels: East Tennessee Confederates and the Civil War, 1860-1870 (University of Tennessee Press, 1999).

Martha S. Jones, Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality For All (Basic Books, 2020).

Jill Lepore, If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future (Liveright, 2020).

Fredrik Logevall, JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956 (Random House, 2020).

Kenneth W. Noe, The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2020).

Conor Towne O’Neill, Down Along With That Devil’s Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy (Algonquin Books, 2020).

Ty Seidule, Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause (St. Martin’s Press, 2021).

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (Random House, 2018).

Brian Taylor, Fighting for Citizenship: Black Northerners and the Debate over Military Service in the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Paul Taylor ed., My Dear Nelly: The Selected Civil War Letters of General Orlando M. Poe To His Wife Eleanor (The Kent State University Press, 2020).

Jonathan Daniel Wells, The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery, and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War (Bold Type Books, 2020).

JCW and South Carolina

A. Gilbert Kennedy ed., A South Carolina Upcountry Saga: The Civil War Letters of Barham Bobo Foster and His Family, 1860-1863 (University of South Carolina Press, 2019).

Philip N. Racine, Living in a Big War in a Small Place: Spartanburg, South Carolina, during the Confederacy (University of South Carolina Press, 2013).

Philip N. Racine ed., Piedmont Farmer: The Journals of David Golightly Harris, 1855-1870 (The University of Tennessee Press, 1990)

Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870 (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Richard Zuczek, State of Rebellion: Reconstruction in South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 1996).

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8 comments… add one
  • Brad Steinecke Mar 1, 2021 @ 14:30

    Mr. Levin, I would like to talk with you further about the Winsmiths! They moved from Glenn Springs to a 34-acre parcel closer to town in the 1870s and remained there until their deaths. This same land had been used in 1865 for an emancipation celebration and was also quite close to land that would become one of the city’s first separate Black neighborhoods in the 1870s. Given that and their huge shift in politics, I’m eager to understand the Winsmiths’ evolving relationship with the Black community. The public library would also be eager to host you for a talk when we once again have in-person programming! Please contact me at your convenience.

  • Brad Nov 3, 2020 @ 20:28

    The Lepore book received mixed reviews. I find her to be a little over extended. She’s getting to be quantity over quality.

  • Matt McKeon Oct 25, 2020 @ 13:57

    The Kidnap Club looks interesting. New York City’s role in the slave trade is also mentioned in “Hanging Captain Gordon” Foner’s history of abolitionists and Sinda’s “The Slave’s Cause.”

    • Kevin Levin Oct 25, 2020 @ 14:00

      Almost finished with the book and highly recommend it.

  • Pruett Black Oct 25, 2020 @ 13:25

    I would have liked to have seen some books written before, during, or just after the civil war. Email me for a list that I think will help you.

    • Kevin Levin Oct 25, 2020 @ 14:00

      Are you speaking in reference to my current book project?

  • Steven Carry Oct 25, 2020 @ 5:22

    The Civil War is a very complicated period in American history. There is no one book that tells the whole story. It takes multiple authors researching the smallest events that in the end had great consequences.

    • Kevin Levin Oct 25, 2020 @ 14:01

      This is true.

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