New to the Civil War Memory Library, 05/27

Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas (Norton, 2019).

John Harris, The Last Slave Ship: New York and the End of the Middle Passage (Yale University Press, 2021).

Elizabeth Hinton, America on Fire: The Untold History of Political Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (Liveright, 2021).

Kelly D. Mezurek, For Their Own Cause: The 27th United States Colored Troops (Kent State University Press, 2016).

Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Random House, 2021).

Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America (Little Brown and Company, 2021).

  • Note: I had the opportunity to read and comment on the manuscript. It is a wonderful book that I can’t recommend highly enough.

Alan Taylor, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 (Norton, 2021).

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11 comments… add one
  • Josh Jun 1, 2021 @ 3:52

    Clint Smith is off to a great start as host of Crash Course: Black American History on YouTube.

    • Kevin Levin Jun 1, 2021 @ 3:53

      He really is the perfect host for that series.

  • John Parrish May 30, 2021 @ 4:29

    Happy Memorial Day Kevin,
    God bless

    • Kevin Levin May 30, 2021 @ 4:31

      To you as well.

  • John Parrish May 30, 2021 @ 4:25

    True academia reply from the master of self service

    • Kevin Levin May 30, 2021 @ 4:31

      🙂

  • John Parrish May 30, 2021 @ 4:01

    Your interpretation of history

    • Kevin Levin May 30, 2021 @ 4:06

      Filtering the complexity of the past through a narrow lens of family ancestry doesn’t count as any meaningful interpretation of history in my book. What you are describing is much too self serving.

  • John Parrish May 30, 2021 @ 3:41

    I’ve been noticing the commercials for genealogy on TV… All of the wonderful things those families ancestors had done.
    Mine were Confederates.
    It was a different time, a different thought process. Any reasonable person could at the very least comprehend that.
    I will never disrespect my ancestry to appeal to a modern narrative.
    Ain’t gonna happen!
    Perhaps you can comprehend that.

    • Kevin Levin May 30, 2021 @ 3:49

      You are free to embrace any attitude you choose re: your ancestors. Just don’t ask me to respond to it as history.

    • Josh Jun 1, 2021 @ 4:04

      If you go looking into your family tree so you can feel better about yourself then you’re going into genealogy for the wrong reasons. Ancestor worship is a mistake, no matter who your ancestors were.

      Who your ancestors were, what they did, and what they believed is interesting and can help inform you how, why, and where your family came to be as it is. It should not define who you are today.

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